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This story is a work of fiction, and contains 2spooky, strong language, an intersex protagonist, scenes of violence and dick-punching and scaaaaary ghosts that may be offensive to some readers.
This is not porn. You’re not going to find any yiffing here, you weirdos.
Don’t say you weren’t warned. Because you were.
But if you don’t take my advice, that’s not my problem.
Some characters appearing in this writing are the creation of others, and are used with artistic and creative license with permission from their creators. Any likeness to other characters is purely coincidental.
💖-Cookie Souris- 💖
XOXOXO
This is not porn. You’re not going to find any yiffing here, you weirdos.
Don’t say you weren’t warned. Because you were.
But if you don’t take my advice, that’s not my problem.
Some characters appearing in this writing are the creation of others, and are used with artistic and creative license with permission from their creators. Any likeness to other characters is purely coincidental.
💖-Cookie Souris- 💖
XOXOXO
Chapter 1
\tMmmm… Simon Oliver…
\tMmf. I could have stared at that boy all day long. Let me tell you a little bit about him: Simon Oliver is a boy I met back in the sixth grade, when I went to Beach City Elementary. Back then, things weren’t really that different compared to the way they were in high school. I had no real friends and spent most of my time by myself, but my grades were good and I always found ways to entertain myself with a Nintendo DS and some privacy. I suppose the only real difference is that I didn’t combat monsters from the Nevernever back then using magical spells and special Seer abilities. That started not too long ago, thanks to Alexandra, and let me tell you… it sure makes life interesting. But Simon’s always been a constant. Ever since I saw him that first time during recess five years ago, I was hooked.
\tHe’s just so cute! He’s a little panda bear. A panda bear! Like a little, adorable teddy bear. He has an entirely white face with little dark circles around his eyes that makes it look like he’s always wearing eyeliner. When I met him, he was a pretty boy, and as he grew up he just turned into a gorgeous boy. He’s all, like, not muscular or huge, but taller than me of course, and slender; and he’s got these… these super cute hips I just wanna squeeze and a butt I just wanna, well… squeeze and thighs I wanna squeeze and…
Ugh!
He was nice to me, too, back then. Well, maybe not “nice,” but comparatively he was alright. Most people either made me feel like I was a ghost, or made me feel like crap. There was a lot of whispering about me back then… again, not too different from now, but it bothered me so much when I was little. Simon never really indulged in any of that. It wasn’t cool, he said, to make fun of someone like me.
The guy was just awesome. I loved him.
And he took my French classes! So, I got to sit there every day and just love him and his black, medium-length, pretty-boy side-swept hair and honey yellow eyes and kissable little lips from the other side of the room.
There was just one teensy, little problem I was always reminded of when we met eyes and he immediately did his best to ignore me.
See, back in the ninth grade, I had this problem where I couldn’t… change for gym class. Here’s the thing: I’m a shemale – call it intersex, call it transgender, call it whatever you want, that’s what I am. I have a penis and nuts, and they’re like… big and noticeable. No vagina, but I also have boobs and a big butt and thick legs and hips that make it hard to find pants at the store sometimes. So, I straddle the line, I guess, with a lean toward the more feminine side. It’s not like I’m the only one in the world, but there aren’t a lot of them at the school I go to. That makes it tough because… which change room do I use? The boys’? Or the girls’?
In elementary school, I got changed on my own in the bathroom rather than the change room. Newshore High tried to accommodate me by letting me choose what change room I wanted to use, but I just didn’t know what one was right for me. Apparently whatever one I chose didn’t matter though, because what I felt didn’t matter. When I tried the boys’ change room, the guys weren’t comfortable, and when I tried the girls’ change room, they were absolutely no different. So, embarrassingly enough, I was forced to once again get changed on my own in one of the bathrooms and it sucked. I hate gym class and now I pretty much refuse to participate. I’d never felt like more of a piece of crap in my life.
But during my maybe… three days in the boys’ change room? Well, Simon was in my class. I tried, I tried so super hard not to even look at him while we were in there. I tried, and I failed. I got to see him half naked! His mid-section was white too, but his shoulders and arms were black, and his legs were black too… He looked so awesome barely covered up by a towel. But of course, the boys in the change room didn’t even get within five feet of me, as if I was contagious or something. They all shuffled awkwardly about their business and never said anything while I was in there. They just didn’t want me there… maybe they saw me as a girl, maybe they just saw me as a freak, but I was not welcome there.
But while I was in there, I just had to see Simon more. I had to. I wrestled with the idea for a while, but after two days in there I decided that if I was going to do anything before I inevitably got kicked out, it was see Simon naked. I waited and watched for the right time to do it, and it presented itself when he went to the showers and pretty much no one else was around. I heard him turn on the water so I crept my way over to the corner where the showers were divided from the rest of the change room, and with all the sneaking skills I could, I peeked around the corner. There he was, in all his naked glory, soaping up his body and I pretty much lost my breath right there.
I wished I was in there with him, it would have been so amazing.
I didn’t realize what I was doing, not until he saw me. I guess I wasn’t hiding very well, since my big mouse ears kind of make hiding around corners impossible and I wasn’t thinking about how much of me could be seen. So, he looks up and sees me standing there with a big ol’ boner in my shorts, and his eyes got really wide and his face just… I don’t think I’d ever seen a guy so embarrassed and freaked out all at the same time. I pretty much shit myself in fear of being caught, and it got even worse when he just stared screaming at me. I bolted, I just ran out without changing out of my gym clothes and got as far away from everyone as possible.
Sufficed to say, it was the next day I was told I wasn’t allowed in the boys’ change room anymore.
God, there wasn’t enough ice cream in the world my mom could have given me to make me feel better about that. I still felt horrible two years later, and we couldn’t even meet eyes without him looking weird and me breaking out in a nervous sweat. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I did something really stupid and invaded some guy’s privacy, staring at him like some creepy stalker and probably making him feel just awful. But he was so pretty… I couldn’t stop looking at him, even though everything was terrible between us. Part of me wanted to just sweep him up and make him mine; and part of me just never wanted to see him again. I was pretty sure we’d both be better off with the latter.
I didn’t need that stress in the eleventh grade, not after unlocking my magical capabilities. Just starting the year, I got pulled into defending Beach City from scary monsters from an alternate dimension known as the Nevernever by my sister’s friend’s mom, who taught me how to cast magic spells. The Nevernever is a place where all things make-belief and imaginary came to life, including things from your worst nightmares. I had a special glove that could rip the invisible barrier that separated the Nevernever from the real world, and a police baton carved into a magic rod. I could make those portals in the barrier with some effort, and send any monster from the Nevernever that got into my world back, and turn them back into imaginary nothingness while I was at it.
I also knew how to shoot fire and concussion blasts with magic words and willpower. I dunno why people didn’t find me more interesting… Oh, wait, it’s because no one believes in that stuff. My magical abilities are my best kept secret… only a few people actually knew about it at the time. That was the way I wanted it, because obviously, I didn’t need any more reason for people to think I was a freak.
It’d been a little while since my last magical adventure, and things were looking pretty good. I got caught up on my homework, I started to have a good understanding of my spells and equipment, and everything was just hunky-dory. Well, I guess that couldn’t last forever…
One day in French class, I was admiring Simon from my side of the room. I liked the way he worked and looked so focused, it was adorable… I had the liberty to do that, because French is easy for me. I’m every bit as bilingual as could be, since my Grandma only spoke French and so I was required to learn it at home. We sometimes spoke it around the house, my sister, mother and I, and I used French words as the vocal components for my magic spells. I was so used to French that I only took the classes so that I could get easy credits – I don’t think there was anything Ms. Gretchen could teach me that I didn’t already know. Heck, I could have taught her a few things, I think.
Simon looked over and saw me looking at him, even though I tried to turn my attention back to my paper quickly. He kind of hunched down and put his textbook up in front of him so it covered his face. I sighed. It really did suck that things just were that way. It made me feel kind of lonely… I mean, if I messed up that bad with him, how else was I bound to mess things up for any future prospects? I’d wanted to be in a relationship so bad… I’m not even sure why, really; I just needed it. In my mind, only a total loser would go through high school never having a boyfriend or girlfriend… and I was over half way done with nothing to show for it.
The bell rang for class to end and I gathered up my books slowly so I could take some time to leave. I looked up when Simon made his way to the front of the class and I caught him giving me a weird look. He looked away when I saw him and exited the class, and I groaned. What the hell was wrong with me? I was still creeping on that guy even though I embarrassed him, embarrassed myself, and got myself thoroughly kicked out of ever using a proper change room for gym class again. I needed to forget about him, but I just couldn’t. He was just too… pretty. I stood up and left the class last. At least he wasn’t in my Career Studies class, so I wouldn’t have to put up with that for the rest of the day.
I exited into the hallway with my books to head to my locker and switch them out for my next class. When I made it to my locker, I opened it up and started putting things away. My locker-neighbour, a Grackle I called Foot-Smell, opened his locker up next to mine and started doing his business too. He peeked around the door of my locker and gave me a lazy smile when I saw him looking at me. It was always odd looking at him, because he had iridescent feathers from his head to the front of his chest. They always seemed to be a different shade of green, blue, or violet whenever I looked.
I got my things and closed my locker door and turned to head off, when Percy just appeared out of nowhere leaning on the lockers next to me. I blinked as I saw him, startled, but not visibly scared. Percy was a tall guy, it’s hard to imagine how he sneaks around like that. At six-foot-one and mostly legs, Percy was easy to pick out of a crowd. He was one of the few monkeys in school with golden tan fur everywhere except for his head. His teased-up hair, sideburns, big, fat eyebrows, and slightly scruffy chin strap were all dark, almost black. His hair had a bit of steely blue dyed into it or something though that was hard for me to notice because I was a foot shorter than him. He always seemed to dress in skinny jeans showing off his defined legs, and that day was no different. He wore a t-shirt that day with something on it about one of the millions of college sports teams around the country… I had no idea which was which, so it was lost on me.
“Hey there shortie.” He grinned.
Foot-Smell closed his locker and looked at us. He looked at Percy, then to me, and then back to Percy again. “Oh, heeeeey… You got a new friend.” He said, “Niiiiice.”
“’Sup.” Percy said.
I kind of looked over my shoulder at Foot-Smell and he just looked at me for a bit before waving to leave. That guy was so weird.
“So… What’s up?” I asked Percy.
Percy just shrugged. “Nothing, nothing,” He said, “Just thought I’d check in with the monster forecast.”
I looked around the hall to see no one really paying attention to us. “There isn’t one,” I said quickly, “And don’t just talk about that stuff while we’re out here.”
“Relax!” Percy waved his hand dismissively, “No one pays attention to you anyway.”
Balled my hands into fists and wiggled them excitedly, but my flat look betrayed my body language. “Gee, wow,” I said monotonously, “You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
Percy pushed off the lockers and stretched his arms over his head. “Mmhm! It’s a gift!” He said.
“Also, I thought you were a boy.” He said, leaning over me and poking me on the top of my head.
I smacked his hand away and he laughed.
Simon passed us by then. I noticed him walking past Percy and stopped humoring the big idiot so I could watch my panda crush go by. I shook my head and reminded myself that I had to ignore him, for my own good, and turned my attention back to Percy. He was standing there grinning as he looked between me and the departed Simon.
“Why, Cookie,” He teased, “Is it possible…?”
“No.” I said firmly.
“That you like….” He went on.
“No.” I said again.
“Simon Oliver?!” He yelled.
“Argh! NO!” I yelled back at him, lifting my boot and stomping on his toe. Percy tensed right up and yanked his foot out from under mine.
“Yeesh! Ow!” Percy hopped around a little, “Come on you can’t lie to me, I saw you giving him the eye. Or were you giving him the eye?”
“I’ve got to get to class.” I said, pushing past Percy.
Percy followed me, towering over me as he did. “I can’t believe you like that dork!” He said, “The guy’s a total nerd! You and him have… uh…”
Percy was about to say that Simon and I had a lot in common. If he was going entirely by the classification of “nerd,” then he’d be kind of right. I wear big square glasses with thick-ish blue frames that are easily noticeable. I wear those because I have a tough time seeing things close to me. They made me look pretty nerdy, and I tried to off-set that with some punkish apparel. I dyed a green streak into the bangs of my black hair, and tended to wear big pairs of boots with thick soles and lots of buckles. That day I was wearing a denim skirt and a brown hoodie too, and my favourite pair of tall, black leather boots. With those boots my height was a whole inch higher than my usual five-foot-nothing.
“Is it because he looks like a chick?” Percy veered the conversation in a different direction.
I played dumb and said, “What?”
“No, he looks like a girl sorta!” Percy went on, “He’s all delicate and small. Do you like guys like that?”
“What’s wrong with being small?” I asked, purposefully dissecting his words to turn them into ammunition.
“You know that’s not what I mean, dork.” Percy huffed, planting his hand on my head and forcing me to look up at him, “You’ve got a crush on girly-boy Simon.”
“I do not.” I said.
“You’re blushing.” Percy smiled.
“No, I’m not!” I said.
I was.
“You totally are.” He said, “Just admit that you’ve got a hard-on for Simon.”
“Tu casteur…! Would you just shut up? Oh my God.” I said, my frustration starting to boil over.
Percy sighed and placed his hands on my shoulders as he walked behind me. “Seriously, you can like whoever you want, I don’t care.” He said, “I like all kinds of chicks!”
“That’s not the same.” I grit my teeth.
“So, do you like him or not?” He asked.
I stopped and turned around to very quickly take my fist and punch him in the dick. Percy’s eyes bugged and he doubled over quickly and I just left him there as he hunched in pain. “Nice talk,” He coughed, “I’m… I’m really starting to get to know you.”
“Merde stupide, ce que une secousse, que Percy, je vais le frapper dans la bite un million de fois…” I grumbled as I walked to Career studies.
I landed in my seat and put my head down on my books. I was ready for the day to be over so bad it wasn't even funny. I didn't even like Career Studies, but I didn’t hate it as much as being reminded of one of the most monumental screw ups of my entire life. I did my best to calm myself down and just let it slide off my back like it was nothing. Life went on, and so did I, and I couldn't get too angry because that was bad for the magic. I took deep breaths and lifted my head when the teacher entered the class and was barely a one foot into the room when she started to get into her lesson. She talked about resume making and started jotting down the proper format to make one on the chalkboard. I cracked open my books and started copying it down.
Everything was going normally until the phone near the door rang. Every classroom had a phone in it and an extension for the office to call if they needed something. The teacher walked to the phone and answered it. I heard her say, "Yes, she is," and then "I'll send her along right away." When she hung up the phone I went back to my work - at least until she gently tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention.
"Cookie, Principal Jones would like to see you in his office." She said.
I looked confused, I know I did, but the teacher, Mrs. Lundquist, looked pretty confused herself about the whole thing. “Just leave your things here,” She said, “I’m sure it won’t take long.”
I got out of my chair and walked out of the class, wondering to myself if maybe I was getting in trouble for hitting Percy. I didn’t think anyone who’d care saw what happened, but I could’ve been mistaken… If that was indeed the case, I was ready for a little finger-wagging about not hitting people and practicing my more peaceful conflict resolution skills. I hurried my way to the principal’s office just to get it over with, and when I walked into the reception area, the administrator – or secretary, more accurately – waved me into Mr. Jones’ office right away.
As far as principals go, Mr. Jones isn’t so bad. He’s not nearly as bad as Mr. Larson, the vice principal. No, Mr. Jones was competent, which was good because if we didn’t have someone who knew what they were doing running things, I’m sure the school would have burned down years ago. As far as dealing with students went, he was strict, but fair. No one got any wiggle room or light treatment, but he was willing to hear stories and take time to think about the punishment he’d dole out to a student rather than just fire away all willy-nilly. Maybe that made sense, he was a pretty small, thinking sort of guy.
As a bloodhound, he had that droopy face and long, floppy ears, and a white and rusty red blotched fur kind of like mine. He always wore some kind of proper chino pants and a dress shirt – his shirts were always light blues or pinks or greens, pastel colours mostly and everyone noticed. His ties were always colourful too. He seemed pretty docile at school but I always kind of suspected that he had a rather lively home life. If he did, he never brought any of it with him – straightforward and to the point, unlike his outfits.
When I entered his office, he had me close the door sit down at his desk in one of the two chairs placed in front of it. He sat at the other end, hands folded together and back straight, and he loomed over me without even trying. He took one moment to click the mouse of his computer a few times and then turned all his attention to me. The office was tiny and quiet, not really decorated in any way. His desk, a few chairs, and his filing cabinets took up all the space, and his little window looked out to see nothing more than just another wing of the school.
“Miss Souris,” He said, pronouncing my name correctly, “I’m sorry to have dragged you from class but I’m afraid this matter needs to be addressed as soon as possible.”
“We were just messing around,” I said, “I didn’t even hit him that hard.”
Mr. Jones’ face screwed up into a confused look, “Uh…? What? No, let’s back up. I’m here to discuss a situation brought to my attention by Simon Oliver.”
I froze. I blinked a several times at him and tightened my jaw up as a wave of tension ran through me. “A… um… what sort of situation…?” I asked.
Mr. Jones took a deep breath and adjusted his posture. It was the “I’m going to level with you” body language that made my own posture deflate as I prepared myself.
“Simon told me everything,” He said, “About what happened in the change rooms.”
“B-But that was two years ago!” I said, “I-I mean, that’s just… well…”
He nodded, “I understand how it may seem like a long time to you, but Simon’s pretty uncomfortable about it. He says that you’ve been giving him a lot of unwanted attention.”
I felt my face burning as I tried to keep up. “I’m not doing anything on purpose, I’ve tried to say sorry to him but he won’t even talk to me!” I explained, “I just…”
Argh, I couldn’t tell him that I liked Simon. I just couldn’t force the words out of my mouth, so the distress of that was kind of just piling on top of what was already going on. I sat up uncomfortably straight and grabbed onto the sides of my chair and just squeezed it, tucking my legs underneath tightly.
“Cookie, let me be honest with you.” Mr. Jones said, “Simon has asked us to change his French class, and he told us that it’s because of you. He says you’re always staring at him even though it’s obvious that he doesn’t want you to. Did you ever notice that he was trying to avoid your attention?”
“Well, yeah, but…” I said.
“And even though you knew this, you continued to do it.” He said.
I blushed even redder and looked away from him. “I j-just… I’m sorry.” I shrugged.
Mr. Jones folded his hands together. “Cookie, let me tell you what we’re going to do,” He said, “You’re not in trouble. But what you did and what you continue to do is a serious problem. While it’s not maybe as extreme as what I’m about to say, it’s like stalking. You’re upsetting Simon, a lot, and if it keeps up we’re going to have a big problem on our hands. It’s my responsibility to address this problem, so the best I can come up with is this: Simon’s going to move to another period French class, and you’re going to leave him alone.”
I couldn’t even say anything. Mr. Jones was calling me a stalker. He said I was stalking Simon. I wasn’t stalking anybody! Sure, yeah, I knew he didn’t like it when I looked at him, but I couldn’t help it! I already felt like garbage for having peeked on him in the shower in the first place, and now I was being faced with this? I’m not going to lie, I felt pretty upset myself. It felt like my heart was being twisted into little knots. I liked Simon, a lot. I didn’t want anything like that to happen, not ever. Now I was basically having a principal mandated restraining order put on me. It didn’t seem fair to be punished for something I didn’t even really mean to do.
“Cookie?”
I must have been sitting there just trying not to cry for the longest time. I just clenched my teeth and stared at a spot-on Mr. Jones’ desk while I fought with all those feelings I had. I was mad and sad; my eyes were all watery and my body was kind of shaky. But I didn’t want to start bawling or anything like that and make myself look even dumber than I already did. Horn ball Cookie, stalking boys like a big ol’ he-she creeper.
And Mr. Jones was just sitting there watching me or something, waiting for me to say something. What was I supposed to say? “Oh, okay, thanks, have a lovely day?” Fuck that.
I got up and I stormed out, and I cut off his yelling for me by slamming the door behind me. I stomped my way out of the office and when I got out, I… didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to go back to class, I wanted to go home and be alone. More frustration, and it was getting to the boiling point. The office exited into a lobby of sorts, where there were stairs leading to the second floor. The only place I could think to go was under those stairs, even though we’re not allowed to go under there for any reason. There were spare chairs and stuff stacked under there, but I was small enough that I managed to squeeze myself between some of them and sit on the floor.
I stayed there, quiet as a mouse ought to be. I cried a little, but I kept my head down and pulled my hood up and yanked on the strings of it to close it around my face and just hide me from the world. Nobody even noticed me down there, and people passed by more than a few times. I didn’t want anyone to notice me anyway, I don’t think I could have handled it at the time.
Chapter 2
Why was it that I could magically combat supernatural creatures, but I couldn’t magic myself into being normal?
Talk about an awkward rest of the day. I didn’t go back to my class until the bell rang to leave. I sat under those stairs for forty-five minutes and just waited and tried to calm down. I felt embarrassed and stupid walking past everyone who were leaving their classes to go back into mine and get my stuff. Mrs. Lundquist asked me if I was alright. I wasn’t, but I lied because I didn’t want to talk to her about it. I didn’t want to anyone about it. Who would want me to talk with them anyway? They’d just think I was weird or something.
I’ve always been used to walking around and not really feeling like I’m part of whatever’s going on around me. It’s that whole being alone thing, and I don’t mind it usually, but it felt awful just then. When I got on the bus and sat down, the only thing I had to do was just… watch people. The more I watched people, the more I felt like crap. Staring bug-eyed at some guy was what got me in trouble in the first place. “Not in trouble,” he said; yeah right. No, no, I wasn’t in trouble at all, I just got told to never even look at somebody again. That’s not trouble at all.
I tried to be as little of a voyeur as possible for me while I was riding home, and when I got off the bus I just wanted to go home, but I had to wait for Fraise’s stupid bus to get there so I could walk her home because she somehow can’t friggin’ just do it herself. So, I waited, kicking as much gravel onto the road as I could in the meantime. Her bus was always, like, ten or fifteen minutes behind mine so I had a pretty good pile going by the time the bus pulled up. It had to drive around it, and I wasn’t even sorry. When Fraise got off she was happy, which sucked because I wasn’t happy, and I tried to just walk with her while hoping to God she wasn’t going to piss me off.
My sister… is an eleven-year-old little bundle of joy. I say that pretty sarcastically. I mean, look, I love her and all that and she’s my sister and I’d never want anything bad to happen to her… but she’s annoying. At least, she was super annoying at the time. See, she’s just a little white mouse, skinny and all that, but she’s got these gigantic beach ball boobs. They make her all clumsy and stuff, and she’s not very smart to begin with. She’s always full of energy and smiles, and that’s great, I wish I was more like that. But with me being full of… I dunno, not that; she was sometimes hard to deal with.
… She pissed me off.
She just kept talking. As soon as she got off the bus it was “blah blah blah, listen to everything I did all day.” Like I gave a crap at the time what she learned in elementary school and what her and her friends did that day.
“Guess what I learned in spelling today!” She said at the end of what felt like a bombardment of stuff I didn’t care about.
“Fraise, let me just say one thing.” I sighed.
“What?” She asked.
“Shut. The fuck. Up.” I answered, as harshly as I could.
Naturally her face pretty much went pale. Her purple eyes got real big and she gasped out loud. “I’m telling Momma!” She shouted, “You can’t talk at me like that!”
“Yeah, well fuck you.” I growled, “I’m not in the mood!”
“I’m telling Momma! I’m telling Momma!” She chanted as she picked up in a run ahead of me… which was sad, because her running just had her kneeing her boobs and making them just fly everywhere in her dress.
“Fine!” I yelled at her, “I don’t even care!”
She ran home ahead of me and I came in a while after because I started crying on the way like an idiot. I got in and sluggishly took my boots off and carried my things up out of our foyer and walked up the stairs to pass by the living room and then go up the second flight of stairs to where my room was. I had to pass by Fraise as she sat in the living room watching TV, and I tried not to say anything to her as I did.
“Why are you crying?” She asked – but not like she was concerned. What she really meant to say was, “Why are you crying, idiot?” I’d made her mad, after all. It feels kind of stupid to say now, but her words actually hurt. I was feeling worse and worse.
I just stomped my feet louder up the stairs to let her know that I didn’t want to talk to her. I marched my way to my room and opened the door to slam it again as hard as I could.
I tossed my bag across the room and it hit my computer desk and knocked over some of the clutter on it, and I started pacing around my room and having a huge mental breakdown. I just didn’t know how to handle myself and deal with the anger and embarrassment I felt. I muttered and cursed, trying not to yell because I didn’t want Fraise coming up and bugging me again. If she did, I probably would have been so frustrated that I would have hit her. Hitting her was definitely not going to make anything better for me, so to avoid that I was going to get my anger out on something else. Preferably, I wanted something that couldn’t be broken. I didn’t want to get grounded or have to buy something to replace anything.
The only real idea I had was my bed. I threw myself onto it and started pounding my fists into it. The impacts weren’t really satisfying. I’m not very strong, I don’t work out or anything, so me punching something accomplishes pretty much nothing. My arm just felt the bouncing rebound of every hit, so I eventually surrendered to a new idea. I got up, went to my bag, opened one of the side pouches, and took the nylon holster for my baton out. I got the thing out of the holster and unlocked the metal rod and extended it with a swing of my arm to let all the segments fall into place. After that, I went back to my bed and just started swinging.
“Stupid.”
Thwack.
“Stupid.”
Thwack.
“Stupid. I’m so stupid.”
I hit my pillow a few times. For a magic focus, that baton did an excellent job at hitting things. It was therapeutic. I just hit it and hit it and hit it, and it just made these dull, satisfying sounds of thumps and thuds. I kept on doing it until my arms were tired and sore and swinging it started to hurt, but I guess I didn’t really mind if it hurt. I was pretty sure I deserved it.
I hated myself more than I hated anything else. How could I have been so stupid? Of course, gawking at some kid, over and over and over again, for years and years, while he obviously doesn’t like it, wasn’t going to turn out good. I don’t even know what I expected at the end of that. It’s not like he liked me, it’s not like he ever would like me. Why did I ever want to hold him in my arms and make out with him on my bed?
Oh, that’s right, because I’m a lonely, freaky stalker.
I just wanted to have a boyfriend for a while, was that too much to ask? Freddy Mac-G, captain of the football team, had girlfriends all the time. Why could he get someone to love him and I was just stuck alone and bitter? That guy was a jackass and I’m… Well, I thought I was pretty perfect at the time. I’m a low-maintenance sort of girl… boy… person.
… I guess I wasn’t making a good argument at the time, freaking out all over my room.
I gave my pillow one good whack and the blunt tip of my baton managed to tear through the fabric somehow. I don’t even know how it was possible, but I hit my pillow and some fluffy cotton flew out when I lifted my baton again. There was a big hole left in it, and I stared at it for a while in disbelief. The whole reason I was hitting a pillow was because I didn’t want to break anything in my room; now my pillow was broken!
I threw myself on my bed and started crying all over again. I felt like I really was a big huge idiot.
Then I heard banging on my door, and my mother’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Cookie Pâte Souris!” She yelled my full name, “You come out here this instant!”
I jolted up, on my knees on the floor next to my bed. I quickly took my baton and collapsed it, tossing it under my bed. “No!” I called back to her, “Go away!”
“Don’t you tell me no, young lady!” She yelled back at me, “You come out here right now and apologize to your sister!”
“No!” I yelled back again.
“Yeah come say sorry to me!” I heard Fraise yell.
“Fraise, let me handle this.” Mom said sternly. She must have got Fraise to go away because I heard my sister stomping back downstairs.
Then she turned her attention back to me and yelled through my bedroom door, “Je compte jusqu'à trois!”
“Je m'en fiche!” I yelled back at her. Translation? She was going to count to three and I didn’t care.
“Un…!”
I got up from my bed and hurried over to my door to grab hold of the knob and hold it tight. I pushed my body against the door too, just to keep her out if she tried to get in. I really, really just wanted to be on my own for a while longer, or maybe forever… I hadn’t really decided how long yet, but it was… long. My mom was holding the handle on the other side, I could feel it when I grabbed onto it.
“Deux…!”
“Go away, I’m serious!” I said, “Please!”
“Trois!”
Mom pulled the door handle harder than I could hold it shut. She really caught me by surprise, and when she shoved on the door to get inside she actually pushed me and I tripped over my own foot and fell onto a pile of dirty laundry I always had next to my closet. My mom was surprisingly strong for a fifty-two-year-old white mouse, barely five-foot-two, with laugh lines and crow’s feet. She was stocky I guess, maybe that had something to do with it… sort of a robust shape. Once again, she was still dressed in the scrubs she wore to work because she must have just gotten home. Her brown hair (it’s dyed and actually mostly gray) was all frazzled from having taken care of old people all day. She’s a Personal Support Associate at the local Senior Home in Beach City – has been since she graduated college, if I understand right.
She looked at me laying in a pile of my dirty socks and underwear and she had the wicked scary mom glare going.
I just couldn’t take it anymore, and I started to cry again.
“Wh… Cookie?” My mom stared at me.
“I buh… I broke my pillow…!” I sobbed. It was really kind of pathetic.
She walked over to me and knelt beside me. She kind of wobbled, but she kept her balance. “Cookie, what’s the matter with you?” She asked, “First you swear at your sister and now you’re crying? Something happened at school, didn’t it?”
Well, what can I say? My mom knows me. I sat up and kind of curled up and rubbed my eyes, snorting and sniffling like a big baby. “Y-Yeah…” I whined.
“Alright,” She said. She sat on the floor with me and crossed her legs, “What happened?”
It took me a while to get the whole story out. I was tempted to blow my nose into one of my dirty long socks. Mom just sat there and listened to me, lovingly encouraging me to get tell the whole thing. I told her about Simon, but I didn’t need to tell her much. She already knew about Simon, sort of. She said she’d seen me pining after the guy when I was little, but she wasn’t prepared for what it’d turned into past that point. I told her about how I spied on him in the shower and how I made him uncomfortable and how the principal told me I had to stay away from him. Mom sat there and listened and was content to let me be comfortable in my clothes pile for a while as she did.
When she finally had an understanding, she frowned. “Oh Cookie, I’m sorry.” She said, “I’m so, so sorry sweetie. That sounds terrible.”
“Wuh-Wuht’s wrong with me-hee?” I sobbed, shaking my head and trying to wipe the tears out of my eyes with my palms.
“Oh Cookie…” Mom finally pushed onto her hands and knees and reached out to wrap her arms around me. She grunted with the effort, but she managed to pick me up and carry me to my bed where she sat me down and then sit down next to me. She hugged me and held me close and pet my head and said, “Mon précieux trésor, there is nothing wrong with you sweetie.”
Her touch made me feel warm and fuzzy. She had a real calming glow to her and I found myself feeling better just by being with her. My mom loved me, and she was always the kind of mom who’d fight for me if she had to, take time off work if I needed her, and she’d do everything she could to cheer me up if I was sad. I came home from school crying a lot when I was a kid, and even though I do it less now, I have… moments, I guess. Mood swings and hormone imbalances, and all kinds of other things would just throw me off and I’d come home feeling like I wanted to trash the place. Mom always came in to provide that little bit of understanding to it all.
“Cookie, you know there’s nothing wrong with you,” She said, “We’ve been through this before. Why would you think otherwise?”
I shook my head. “He switched classes just to get away from me!” I said.
“Bet he wouldn’t even care if I was just a girl.” I grumbled.
Mom pet my head softly. “It has nothing to do with that.” She said, “Sweetie, teenagers are just like that. You’re at a point in your life where you’re going to want to be with someone so badly that you’ll do some crazy things. Everyone was like that at one point in their lives. I felt lonely when I was in high school, and I was just a girl. Your gender doesn’t change a thing.”
“You never spied on guys in the shower.” I said, “That’s… who does that?”
Mom laughed. “That’s not so different from, say, looking at pornography.” She said, “Which is filthy, certainly, but it’s a part of your curiosity, sweetie. You’re curious. There’s nothing wrong with being curious. That boy? He’s probably just as curious and uncomfortable with himself as you are right now. It’s just the way of things.”
“But I will ask you not to look at naked men anymore,” She gave me a look.
“I… I don’t!” I blushed.
“Of course, you don’t.” She grinned, “I know my daughter. What I’d prefer you do is be smart about it. You can be curious and careful at the same time.”
I sighed.
“Sweetie, you have a lot of love to give,” Mom said, “And one day, you’re going to give it to someone, and they are going to be so, so lucky… But you’re only sixteen. You don’t have to be in a rush, and one boy not returning your affections isn’t the end of the world. One day someone will come along and you’ll know when you find them. You’re going to make mistakes as you go, but that’s how you learn, and you have to know in your heart that sometimes things are going to happen and it’s not going to be your fault. Just remember that it’s okay. It’s okay to make mistakes.”
I flattened my ears. “But, I…” I didn’t know what to say. It didn’t feel okay.
Mom kissed my forehead and said, “You’re going to be just fine. But you’ll need to keep away from that boy for a while.”
I slumped against her and grumbled, “I just want someone to…”
“I know, sweetie,” She stroked my back, “I know. We love you, very much.”
Mom sat me up straight and wiped away any tears left over on my face. I felt… better, a bit. I let myself feel better in the moment, letting myself think that my mom was right. What I did was one big, giant mistake; an accident that ended up bad. It didn’t feel good, but I wasn’t in jail, I wasn’t dead, or sick or anything… I was just sad. It wasn’t going to be easy facing anyone if they knew what I did or what had happened, and it was going to be especially hard facing Simon ever again, but at least I could. It wasn’t the end of the world, just like mom said. I let myself think that way because my mom was sitting there with me, kind of forcing me to see things for her perspective… and I wanted to believe that she knew what she was talking about.
Ultimately, I just wished the problem went away, or never happened in the first place, but I couldn’t make things that way. I suppose as a magician I had to at least accept that as being logical. I rubbed my hands together and then rubbed my face. I wasn’t feeling very confident, but I was okay, and I supposed that’s what mattered.
“Mm, feeling better?” Mom asked.
“A little.” I said, “I dunno what I’m going to do at school now.”
“I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you think, sweetie,” She said, “Live and learn. Eventually it’ll all just be water under the bridge.”
She let me go and stood up. “You just need to take one step forward.” She said, “As long as you have the strength to put one foot in front of the next, nothing can hold you back. That’s what Pépé always said when I felt down.”
I just looked at her, feeling a little inspired by my late grandfather’s words. Mom told me about him sometimes, and he seemed like he was a strong man. I suppose being an officer in the air force, he had to be. Mom seemed really gentle in comparison to the way he sounded, so it was weird to think she came from something like that. Still, whenever things got rough, she’d pull out something from old Pépé. I have to admit… it was effective.
“Okay.” I agreed. One foot in front of the other didn’t sound too hard.
“Start by apologizing to your sister.” She ordered, also in a tone that she probably got from grandpa. She looked at me with her hands on her hips and I felt shame wash over me. I stood up and slunk out of my room to go apologize while my mom collected my torn pillow and, I hoped, would replace it with another one while I was busy doing that.
I said I was sorry to Fraise and explained to her that I had a bad day and was just feeling angry. Fraise was… less than forgiving, but I made her begrudgingly come around. She couldn’t stay mad at anyone forever, least of all me.
Sigh…
I wish I could say that was the end of the story. It really would have been better if I just started feeling good about myself again after that, but it just didn’t turn out that way. For one, I still felt like a piece of crap. The fact that I did what I did to cause the problem in the first place wasn’t okay, and while I could say sorry to Fraise for mouthing off at her, I couldn’t say sorry to Simon. He didn’t want to even look at me, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. It’s just hard, you know, knowing that someone out there who you would have liked to like just hates you so much. I was afraid that I was going to see him again, or get too close to him, or make some other kind of mistake that was going to make the situation worse. It’s hard never seeing someone you go to school with; I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle that.
One step at a time, I guess…
But it gets worse before it gets better, let me tell you. This whole story wouldn’t be here if I didn’t learn some lessons the hard way.
Chapter 3
A few days later, I finally told Percy what happened.
“What, really? Woooow.” Percy said. I’d met him outside the school, under a big oak tree that stood alone in the grass near the road. It was getting cooler out, so Percy had started wearing sweatshirt jackets. I don’t know when sweatshirts started having diagonal zippers that went over the breast, but it was apparently a thing his blue top had. Still, cool as it was he couldn’t rid himself of the skinny jeans, and wore black ones so he didn’t clash. For an athlete, he really was fashion-conscious. I guess I couldn’t say much though, I was wearing a cape.
Once again, this cape was something my grandmother stitched up for me, and it’s just a short, dark green one that wraps around my shoulders. It went well with my black dress, which went well with my boots. For a social reject, I am also very fashion-conscious; and I can’t lie, wearing a cape made me feel even more like a magician than I already was. It’s the little things.
I sat at the base of that tree with my knees hugged up against me. “Yeah.” I said.
“What a dirt bag!” Percy threw up his arms, “He couldn’t just tell you to get lost? Going to the principal all ‘boo-hoo!’ What a wuss!”
I shrugged my shoulders.
Percy squat down to be more level with me. “Look,” He said, “I’ve got a whole bunch of chicks who hate me. It’s not really that bad! You just have to drop that guy and move on, sister! There’s going to be all kinds of other people out there for you to like.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I sighed, “My mom already went through all that. I’m trying, it’s just been tough. I’ve been taking different ways to class just to avoid walking past his locker in case he’s there.”
I shivered a little, but not because of the cold.
“Aw man, who cares if you walk past his locker?” Percy shrugged, “You can only inconvenience yourself so much before that guy’s gonna realize that he’s the one that can get fucked. I don’t go out of my way to avoid girls who don’t like me – the way I look at it, it’s their loss!”
“I… ugh.” I shook my head, “I don’t think this is the same thing.”
“It looks like I need to teach you the fine art of subtle scoping.” Percy grinned, moving in close and throwing his arm around my shoulder. He made a sweeping gesture with his other hand as if spelling it out in the air and said, “See, yet be unseen, Cookie my girl.”
I rolled my eyes and looked away from Percy to see a group of girls approaching us lead by Evangeline Dickson. Yes, the bane of my existence Evangeline Dickson. She’s a girl I’ve known since the third grade and we are not friends. She’s a toy poodle, all fluffed up into a pink powder puff but her hair is straight and long. She always wears nice clothes, fancy shoes, jewelry, and held her nose upwards at an angle to look down at everyone else. She’s stuck-up, spoiled, and mean; yet somehow, she’s popular. She’s not even that hot, because she’s so skinny and flat, and yet she’s probably dated the entire football team on three separate occasions. She waltzed up to me with her following of social leeches, fancy handbag hanging over her shoulder, with her fancy gray coat (that looked a lot like my winter coat, but is somehow more impressive), smelling like flowers from a foot away.
“Oh my god, ew.” She said as she stopped and looked at Percy and me, “Perseus, why do you hang out with her? Don’t you know that she’s a stalker?”
I think I heard my heart break, so I tensed up and put on my straight face.
Percy stood up quickly. “H-Hi Evangeline!” He said, nervously fidgeting, “What? Stalker? Cookie? No, never! She’s a little weird, but… she’s alright!”
“Simon told me himself,” She said, “When him and I went to the movies last night.”
The end of that statement was directed squarely at me, she accentuated every word so that it’d sound direct and taunting. I, of course, felt anger wash over me. Simon went out with that harpy? Really? I couldn’t even imagine why, not past the idea that, well, everyone wanted to go out with Evangeline. Everyone but me, anyway.
I looked away from her. The worst part about the whole thing is that she knew I liked Simon, and she’d known for years. I knew she was just trying to rub my face in it, I just knew it.
“Yeah, he was pretty upset, Cookie.” She said, “So I took him out to try and make him forget about you. Also, because he’s cute.”
“Wow.” Percy said, trying to absorb the blunt impacts he was witnessing.
I turned my head and shrugged. “Well, whatever, good for you.” I said.
“And by the way, stay away from him,” Evangeline stepped closer to me, “Or you and me are going to have a problem.”
“Whatever.” I said, trying not to get upset. Maybe I was angrier that someone would go through all that effort to make me mad, or make me jealous, or something like that. I just couldn’t tell if I was mad at what she was saying or how she was saying it.
“Okay, well, she’s kind of not going near him anyway, sooo…” Percy swept in to try and reason with Evangeline, but it wasn’t going to work. That girl, for some reason, liked to make my life miserable. I gave up trying to guess why; she was just evil and felt better about herself by trying to bring me down, or so my theory stayed.
“Who would do that, anyway? Talk about weird.” I heard one of Evangeline’s posse say. “She’s always been weird.” I heard another one respond. “What kind of boy would even like someone like her? Isn’t she basically a boy too? So gross.” I heard the last one whisper.
I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out in a huff. I had to keep a stiff upper lip or I was just going to end up getting super upset again.
… Aw who am I kidding? I was already upset again.
I pushed myself to my feet and picked up my backpack from where it sat on the ground and carried it over my shoulder. “Yeah, I’m out of here.” I said, “Evangeline, quit stalking me. Jeez.”
“Tch!” The girl curled her lip, “As if! You’re the stalker!”
“Yeah you’re always just going out of your way to work me up.” I said, waving my finger in the air in a circle as I passed her by, “Super cool. You’re so cool.”
“Whatever, freak!” Evangeline huffed, “Good luck getting any guy to go out with you when they all realize you’re just some pervert – I mean, not that they’d go out with a girl like you anyway. Or, oops, I mean a boy.”
“Or, wait, what are you again? A he? Or a she?” One of her stupid friends asked.
“She’s an it!” The other added.
“Yeah,” Evangeline chuckled, “Just a thing.”
“Whoa, girls, wow.” Percy stepped between the girls and me, but I just kept walking.
I couldn’t stop and turn around or I probably would have blasted them with a fireball or something. So, I just stayed quiet and didn’t say a word, walking off and leaving the girls in the dust. It took Percy a little while to catch up to me, but he didn’t say anything either as we walked into the west wing entrance of the school. I stopped at the bottom of the stairwell there with one foot on the bottom step. I turned and looked at Percy, and he just stared back at me.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m used to doing things by myself. So, I’m just going to do that, okay?”
Percy looked confused. “What, you want me to get lost?” He asked.
I nodded and immediately felt like a piece of shit for doing it; but it was everything I could do not to look like I was about to cry or something and I didn’t want Percy seeing me like that.
“Oh,” Percy frowned, looking around awkwardly, “Well… okay then.”
I didn’t wait for him to leave, instead I continued up the stairs and left him behind. He wasn’t being any help anyway, because he thought Evangeline was hot. Everybody thought she was hot, and I never understood why. I suppose Simon thought she was hot too, which was just perfect. Was there anyone in that school that wasn’t interested in that witch? Did she have money or something? A gold-plated vagina? I never knew. Sometimes I’d entertained the idea that there was just a side to the girl I never knew, and that there was a perfectly good reason she was as popular as she was, but… From where I sat, knowing her almost all my life, I couldn’t see it no matter how hard I tried.
Whatever the reason, Evangeline and her friends were pretty much the worst, and I’d had just about enough of the whole stalker business.
I should have known that someone caught on to what happened. I thought people were trying to avoid me more than usual, but it’s hard to tell for sure when you’re in a situation like mine. Sometimes I just pop up on the social radar again; just once every few weeks or so people will remember I’m around and that I’m quiet and weird-looking. They’ll try to avoid me, or stare at me without even trying to make it subtle, and then Evangeline will come by and put me down for a while, and then I’d go back to being invisible. That sort of thing happened to me on and off so often that I’d kind of grown oblivious to it… but it was happening again, and this time because I’d been outed by Simon.
That bastard.
He had to have known that telling Evangeline anything means that her Facebook and Twitter friends will know within seconds of her getting her phone out. Only an idiot doesn’t know that she’s connected to all the sports teams, the student council, and a lot of the extracurricular clubs around the school. So, he told her and there was no way he didn’t know that telling her would ruin my life… uh, more than it’s already been ruined by just being alive and by magical creature-things.
I stopped in my trudge down the hall to look around at the students. They went around me like I was contagious or something, and none of them wanted to make eye contact with me, and they kept their voices down whenever I got near them, whispering so that even my ears couldn’t hear them. They were talking about me, that much was obvious, and whatever they were saying couldn’t have been good. At that point, I just started getting mad. What exactly did I do to deserve that? Wasn’t I already embarrassed enough? I felt terrible, but did they have to make it worse with the ridicule and the alienation?
Fucking Simon. I couldn’t believe I even liked that guy! And why? Because he was cute? Well, I’d just come to learn that being cute doesn’t mean jack when you’re a total asshole. Oh, sure, I would continue to imagine him in skimpy, clingy underwear when I was alone; but I wasn’t going to do it as often after that, no sir! And I also wouldn’t enjoy any other moment of thinking of him, because it was just starting to make me mad. I was getting so mad, in fact, that I noticed I was panting through my nose like some kind of angry animal when I finally snapped out of my rage-thoughts. People were staring at me again…
I needed to be alone-alone. It wasn’t just Percy that needed to go away, everybody needed to go away before I had a meltdown. I couldn’t leave school… or, well, I could have but I’d be stranded in Newshore until home-time. The only thing I could think to do was go to the second floor, east wing washrooms to get the privacy I needed. Those washrooms had some weird history of being gross, so nobody really used them unless they were desperate. I’d been in them before, both the girls’ and the boys’, and I can honestly say that they’re not really dirty but they do smell a little funny compared to the rest of the washrooms. So, deciding that I could tough out the smell for a little while, I ducked into the washrooms for some much-needed alone time.
I went into the boys’ washroom and listened around before I rounded the corner into the room. The place sounded empty and when I did get into the bulk of the washroom there really wasn’t anyone to be found. The stall doors were all left open and the urinals weren’t being used either. When the door swung closed, the washroom was mostly silent. It was pretty sizable, and the eggshell white walls were heavy painted brick and the tile floors were… well, tiley. The stalls were metal and brown and had graffiti all over the insides of them and there were stains around the bathroom that obviously could never come out.
There were much nicer bathrooms than that in the school – the year before, the downstairs ones were renovated to look sleek and modern. The washroom I was in looked like it hadn’t been touched up in years. The walls had chipped paint and words scratched into them and the floor tiles were cracked and chipped in some places. The far wall also seemed to house some other area that I think lead into a service area with some old pipes and stuff. I’d never seen anyone go in there before, even though there was an old cross-wire grate door with a padlock on it that someone must have had the key to. Maybe that was why nobody ever used the bathroom… it was always a little weird wondering what that section was even used for.
I looked around one more time, standing in the center of the bathroom and waiting to see if anyone would come in… nobody did, so I figured: hey, while I’m there, I may as well pee. I did, in a urinal, because I’m a classy girl like that, and I grumbled to myself the whole time.
“Stupid Simon, imbécile.” I said, “Stupid Evangeline, la pouffiasse. Being dead would be so much easier right now… or invisible. Really invisible. I wonder if Alex can make me invisible. Hey, I should ask. Why the fuck not? God damnit… Simon, you jackass, I hate you.”
Finishing my business, I straightened out my clothes and turned to the sink. The sink was an industrial wash fountain – the half-circle kind made entirely of metal and was operated by a push bar you stepped on to make the water come out. It was rusted in some places and the push bar had to be pushed pretty hard just to make it work. It was old and clunky, and whenever you pushed the bar it’d make a loud “kachunk!” sound. I’d never seen a sink like that anywhere else before; even the other washrooms in the school didn’t have one.
I made my way over to it a little sluggishly. I guessed I was just feeling a little overwhelmed, but getting out my anger in that quiet bathroom was actually sort of helping. I wanted to linger in there for a little while longer, so I planted my foot on the push bar and then leaned my elbows onto the edge of the sink so my hands could hang over and get sprayed by the multiple, tiny water spouts that ejected the refreshingly cold liquid from a center cylinder. I just let my hands sit there getting wet along with my hair, and I stretched out my body and lowered my head toward the sink, all while keeping my one foot on the bar. It was kind of a stretch, I’m not that flexible, but it was nice. I tried to relax while I had the chance, just whipping my tail around in frustration.
While I was commiserating with myself, everything was pretty quiet. The sounds outside were muffled, and I felt more relaxed. That was why it was so easy to hear the washroom door creak open on its old hinges, squeaking as it swung open and closed really fast. The time it took was too short for someone to have entered, not normally anyway, so I looked up and toward the exit to wait and see if anyone would come in. It only took me a few seconds to realize that no one was coming in, so I figured that someone just pushed the door open by mistake or was just screwing around. I ignored it and went back to washing my hands, deciding that if anything was going to interfere with my peace and quiet that I should just go somewhere else. I pumped some soap from the attached dispenser and rubbed it in – because I’m not a slob – and then washed off.
When I was going to get some paper towel from the nearby dispenser, a sudden slamming sound startled me. One of the stall doors whipped open and hit itself on the inside, and the sound made me jump and turn quickly to look. I would have sworn that no one was in that bathroom, and I was right; when I looked into the stall, it was empty. I took a deep breath to settle my beating heart and breathed out slowly while scrunching up my eyebrows in confusion. That was weird, and I was starting to feel a little nervous, so I quickly got my paper towel and dried off my hands.
It was starting to feel a little chilly in there for some reason… maybe, I thought, the place was so old and lacking in maintenance that there were some faults that needed to be sealed along the walls.
I hadn’t even gotten my hands completely dry and was pumping the handle on the dispenser to dole out some more paper towel when I heard a voice unmistakably whisper into my ear.
“Mabel.”
The thing was, it came from my right side, which was opposite the bathroom’s entrance. Not expecting the voice, I flinched and whirled around to see… no one. I held my hand up to my ear and racked my brain as I tried to make sense of what was going on – I was hearing noises and voices, and that could have only meant a couple of things. One, it was possible that I could hear people from another room, through a crack or thin flooring or something… The other option was that I was going crazy from being so stressed out. I really should have known that it was the third, least likely option.
As I was turning to quickly get out of there, a vision appeared before me. It faded into sight gradually over the span of a second or two, and it revealed the pale, indistinct image of a canine boy of some kind. Seeing random images was all well and good - Alex tended to pop up in the weirdest places – but the boy I saw faded down toward his feet, until he looked as if he’d disappeared from the shin down, and wasn’t touching the floor.
He was a ghost.
I didn’t know what to think. For a second I just stood there staring at this ghost boy who looked like he couldn’t have been much older than me, if he was at all. He was entirely grayscale, like an old silent film or something being projected into the air. It wasn’t until he reached out for me that I started moving, turning quickly to run into the trash can next to the paper towel dispenser. I hit it hard and nearly tipped it, lurching over it and catching it quickly with my hands to keep it from hitting the ground. I clumsily put it right and stepped around it to make for the door, turning to face the ghost again and walking backwards toward the exit.
“Don’t leave me!” His ghostly voice echoed out, and he rushed forward with arms outstretched to stop me. I hit my shoulder off a corner and stopped in my tracks. I pushed out one of my hands as he charged in, but he passed right through it and stopped just in front of me. One of his hands was placed against the wall where I stopped – the foot-thick divider that separated the bathroom from its entrance. All I had to do was turn around and make a run for it, but as his body passed through my arm I felt a chilling cold rush through me that made me tense up all over, making my muscles rigid like ice.
“You’re my girl!” He yelled, right in my face, “Mabel!”
I shook my head as I stared into his eyes, which appeared as nothing but milky white. “W-What? What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, “I’m no Mabel!”
His face blurred and twisted into a look of anger. “You’re mine!” He bellowed, “You’re MINE!”
I wasn’t sure right away what move he made, but his face got so close to mine that it was all too easy to just look through him and out into the bathroom. He closed his eyes and moved so that his entire, chilling body was against mine – maybe even slightly inside mine, I wasn’t sure. All I felt at that moment was like ice water had taken the place of all my blood. It was a frostbite sort of cold, excruciatingly painful as it all went straight to my brain and tensed up every muscle in my body. My teeth ground, my throat tried to close, the muscles in my neck seized, and I felt like my ribs would shatter like glass if I could have breathed. My nostrils stuck shut and I felt like all the air was being sucked out of my mouth, and the shock of it unfocused my vision.
That ghost kid was kissing me. His hand touched my head, and his lips were against mine, but it felt like nothing was there at all. I only felt cold and breathless, and the familiar sensation of will energy buzzing around me like a hive of angry bees. The constriction I felt around my lungs felt similar to the sort of feelings I’d experience when I was trying to manipulate the veil between the real world and the Nevernever. My one hand stayed outstretched through the boy’s chest, but it felt like my fingers wanted to curl backwards on themselves. I started to panic, but I wasn’t sure my heart could even beat in that moment. If it wasn’t for me blinking so much, I wouldn’t have thought I had any control over my body.
I was losing the fight against unconsciousness quickly, so I opened my other hand and rose it to be level next to my head. I tilted my head away from my hand, my body shaking with the effort and my bones groaning in protest. The only hope I had was casting a spell, but I couldn’t say the magic words to give that spell any real shape. I had to skip that step and try to envision my desired effect, gather up the will energy, and then force it all out of my body. I was told that sort of thing would be dangerous, but I didn’t really have a choice. Using what little brain-power I had left, what with the rapidly dying brain cells I was probably suffering thanks to lack of oxygen, I balled up the fear for my life and let it fly.
I never really knew this about spells, but it apparently is super important to focus it on a point of exit from your body. Unfortunately, focus was in short supply in that moment, so I just unloaded it… so, I combusted, sort of. From a focal point originating somewhere in my right side, flames sprayed out into the air toward my ghostly molester. The arm of my dress burned up like a cigarette as the fire licked the air in front of me like the most wide-spread flamethrower that ever existed. The ghost turned to static, fuzzing and rippling until its incorporeal form was torn away from me and sprayed out into the air by the flames. I was free, and I collapsed to the floor as warmth returned to my body and I let air rush into my lungs.
The sprinkler system lining the ceiling suddenly flicked on, and a loud buzzing sounded throughout the entire school as the fire alarm went off. The fire suppression system activated, and water started to shower down over everything in sight. It took seconds for pretty much everything to get soaked, including me and my now one-sleeved dress and smoldering cape. I wheezed as I looked up to see the ghost rematerialize in the air, his entire being seemingly masked by rage. My hand went for my pocket, but I’d left my baton in my locker; big mistake. I barely had enough time to throw myself aside when the ghost came at me again, and his body passed clean through the wall behind me as he missed. I turned, planted my hand on the wet tile flooring, and tried to get up. My boots squeaked across the floor and slipped, landing me on my face on the floor instead.
When the ghost rounded the corner again, I threw out my bare arm toward him and opened my palm to fire off another spell. “Incend--!” I didn’t even get the full word out before he ghost-tackled me… or something. He charged me, and his body disappeared right before impact only to have me feel myself getting dragged across the floor at a high speed. I slid all the way across the bathroom floor and into the gate leading to the maintenance area with a loud crash, bending some of the wire with my back. I gasped, then grit my teeth through the pain of the impact; it really wasn’t so bad since I didn’t hit the brick wall instead, so I was able to scramble to my feet quickly and make a run for the door.
As I ran, I turned mid-stride by instinct to see the ghost coming at me again. While still running backwards, I threw out my palm and shouted, “Percuter!” Kinetic energy, the raw force of my will energy imposing itself on the real world, flew from my hand to attack the apparition. I could see the trail of it fly through the air as it displaced the water raining down, and I watched the uncontained blast of energy shake the doors of the stalls, blow the paper towel dispenser clear off the wall, and fly through the ghost. Once again, its body seemed to just come apart, being phased out of existence temporarily. I took that as my chance to book it, and I ran out of the bathroom as quick as I could.
I slid on my boots into the hall, panting for breath and hurrying to find the nearest exit. The halls were mostly empty – other students had already left to head out front of the school, as the fire protocol stated. The sprinklers in the halls were going full-blast too, soaking everything around me and making the tile floor slippery and a little treacherous. I almost lost my footing a couple of times when I ran toward the west wing stairwell. I flew down the stairs and out the nearby doors, only to run straight into Mr. Larson, the Vice Principal. That knucklehead probably wouldn’t even have noticed me if I didn’t run right into his horribly clashing black necktie.
“Whoa!” He shouted, quickly grabbing onto me. He stopped me from moving and looked at me just to determine who I was, and that’s when he noticed the state of my clothes.
“Miss Souris?!” He gasped, saying my name wrong again, “What is going on here? Why are your clothes…?!”
“Mr. Larson,” I said, “Hold on, I can…!”
“Come with me right now young, uh, lady!” He said, grabbing me by the arm, “You’ll explain yourself to Mr. Jones and the Fire Chief!”
“I…! Ugh…” I groaned as the man pulled me along harshly, marching me past crowds of students gathered out front. I turned to look back at the building, which really wasn’t on fire at all since the magical fire was pretty temporary and nothing in the bathroom could have caught anyway… I tried to make sense out of everything that had just happened to me, all while wondering how in the world a ghost could even be in the washroom of a high school, of all places. Of course I’d be the one to find it though.
As I turned to see Mr. Jones, Mr. Larson, and the Chief of the local Fire Department waiting cross-armed and unimpressed for my explanation, I didn’t have to question how my luck landed me in yet another supernatural situation. I stared at them and held my arm up quickly – I didn’t even have to fake distress, because I was still feeling pretty shaken from my encounter with the spirit.
“I was just trying to put it out…!” I said.
Chapter 4
The school believed my story. The thing was, the Fire Department couldn’t figure out how exactly the fire even started. The best they found was a little bit of ash; I think I probably set fire to the paper towel. They had to pass it off as mischief, in which there was no clear perpetrator. I ran with that in whatever story I relayed after that. To make things even better, everyone just assumed that I was almost caught in a fire, which made everyone go into instant sympathy mode and I got pretty much whatever I wanted. They had my Mom come in and pick me up because my clothes were a little burned off, and aside from being part impressed and part worried that I’d decided to take action against a fire rather than just leave the building, she was pretty okay with it.
We got home and I had to throw out both my dress and my cape, which sucked. Mom told me she’d take me to get a new dress on the weekend though, so all that worked out in the end… that left me to focus entirely on the ghost.
I noticed a few things about it: first, my magic kind of worked against it and kind of didn’t. I could hit him, but he wouldn’t just stay dead… or, maybe, technically he did, but… well, whatever. The fact of the matter was that I couldn’t just blast him and leave it; he just came back almost right away. The second thing I noticed was that he seemed to think I was someone named Mabel for some reason, and when I tried to talk to him about it he just kind of ignored me. Third, basically touching him at all super sucked – literally, it was like having a vacuum shoved down my throat while locked in a meat freezer, except a few hundred times worse. My heart was still racing after I got home and the whole ordeal was long over.
Mom went back to work once she got me home because she trusts me to be on my own like that. I only had a few hours until Fraise was going to be off school, so I got changed into some loose pants and a t-shirt, and then almost ran to Alex’s house to try and talk with her. I whipped across the way in almost record time, and ran up to my mentor’s modest little family home to knock on the door. I noticed when I arrived that their van wasn’t parked in the drive way, so for a while I thought that no one was going to be around. I knocked a few more times with no immediate answer, so I got ready to turn and leave when I heard the door click open.
It barely opened a crack and Zeroelle peeked through. “Cookie?” She seemed surprised, “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
“I was, but I found a ghost in the bathroom.” I said, as blunt and direct as possible.
“… Okay then.” She blinked, accepting my strange reasoning at face value, “Unfortunately Alexandra isn’t home right now.”
“Oh,” I said, slumping my shoulders, “Well… what am I supposed to do?”
Zeroelle watched me for a moment and then said, “Okay, I’ll unlock the door, but don’t come in right away.”
“Uhh…” I blinked at her, “Okay…?”
Zeroelle closed the door and I heard her unfasten a chain lock that had been holding the door secure. After that, there was silence. I stood out there in the afternoon sun, waiting for a little while before I stepped forward to open the door.
“You can come in!” I heard Zeroelle’s voice from inside just as my hand touched the knob. I rolled my eyes and opened the door to step into their house. I saw Zeroelle standing in a doorway off to the side of the stairs, one that lead down into the basement. The weird thing about the house was that all the curtains were drawn and the blinds were all down. It was dim in every room in the house, with just slivers of sunlight peeking through at any one place. When I closed the door, everything just got darker but I could still see where I was going. I took off my boots and didn’t even try to hide my confusion as I looked around.
“I was just doing some reorganizing in the basement,” Zeroelle said, “Come on down.”
“It’s a little dark in here, isn’t it?” I asked.
Zeroelle must not have heard what I said because she was already making her way downstairs into the basement without answering me. I followed her until about the stairs before I held my hand out to touch the wall and keep my balance. I stepped down the wooden stairs one at a time – it smelled like sawdust a little, so I figured the stairs must have been fairly new and not actually built into the house when it was constructed. The railing built into it felt like an untreated plank of wood wide enough to be a handful. I was careful to run my hand across it as I descended, my footsteps making the wooden stairs creak every step of the way. The light from the dim upstairs got dim fast, and eventually I was just walking in complete blackness. I took every step like I’d fall into a pit any second then. I stopped when my venturing foot touched cold concrete.
It smelled a little funny down there. Some bouquet of odors mixed in the air and I took a little time to really sniff at it and try and figure out what it was. It smelled like spices, oil, old must, and wood. I couldn’t see anything of course, not until Zeroelle struck a match and used it to light an oil lamp sitting on an antique desk. The light from the lamp was enough to illuminate a fair bit of the basement, but it still cast sharp shadows all over everything. I was surprised at all the old stuff down there though. Like the attic, where I thought Alex kept all her books, there were tons more books stashed in the basement. They were all crammed together on old-looking bookshelves with chipped wood and scratches on them. There were crates and boxes everywhere, some of them stacked on top of one another until they stood taller than I am.
Zeroelle just went back to her organizing, starting to move things around, so I stepped carefully through the basement to take a better look at what was in it. I could see jars on the floor, old urns and stuff like that. Lots of things looked like they were made back in the old days… like the old, old days, where Europe was still colonizing. Pushed into little nooks were even older things, like stone slabs that looked like they’d been ripped right off buildings, and an old saddle. It was all obviously very aged, but kept pretty well. When I turned my attention back to Zeroelle, she was just pulling a sword from an old set of armor. I have to admit I stared in shock as she pulled the thing from its scabbard – considering it was almost as tall as she was, I’d say it was a claymore.
“Whoa.” I said out loud.
“I was just feeling a little nostalgic.” Zeroelle smiled, turning to some oils and a cloth she’d placed on one of the shorter stacks of boxes. She opened the ceramic bottle and soaked the cloth a little before setting everything down and sitting back on a stool. Resting the blade carefully on her thigh, she started to polish it with the cloth. The spicy smell got stronger, and I wrinkled my nose.
Zeroelle chuckled, a charming, British sort of chuckle… if that’s even a good descriptor. “A little bit of clover oil,” She hummed, “Mixed with mineral oil.”
“Where the heck did you get all this stuff?” I asked, turning in place, “It’s like a museum.”
“I like to collect antiquities,” Zeroelle said, “But let’s look past that for a moment, hm? Tell me about your ghost.”
Turning back to her, I shrugged. “Well, it was dead,” I explained, “And a boy. He was in one of the washrooms in the school. He just started talking to me out of nowhere; after that, he lost his shit and started screaming at me and then he attacked me.”
“Curious.” Zeroelle said.
I shivered when I thought about how it felt when the ghost touched me. “He… kissed me, or… at least tried,” I muttered, “And he called me Mabel.”
“Mabel? Hm.” Zeroelle muttered, but I got the feeling she didn’t really know anything more than I did. She didn’t say anything else after that, she just kept polishing her sword.
I waited a bit before leaning a little toward her and saying, “So…? Do you know anything about ghosts?”
“I don’t,” Zeroelle said, “Not in the magical sense, anyway. I do know that ghosts have very particular real-estate. They only exist in areas where they can press against the veil. This is accomplished one of two ways: One, it’s a place the ghost’s memory is strongly connected to; or two, it’s a place where the barrier between the Nevernever and our world is weak.”
“The Nevernever?” I asked, “Do ghosts come from there?”
“Yes.” Zeroelle said, “I don’t know the particular how or why, just that they do. The Nevernever is connected to us in strange ways, remember? Dreams are one, but death is another. Didn’t Alexandra teach you that?”
“Well, she said that Heaven and Hell exist in the Nevernever,” I thought back, “But I didn’t think…”
“Oh, they certainly do” Zeroelle stopped polishing and looked up from her work to address me, “Hades, Nifelheim, Sheol, Limbo, Purgatory… All of that has its place in the Nevernever. It is, after all, a place based on imagination. The thing about that imagination is that the more something is imagined by more and more people, the more likely it is to exist. A collective belief maintains a strong presence there.”
I listened to what she was saying and tried to process it bit by bit. The idea that not only one Hell, but every Hell that’s ever existed actually had a separate presence in the Nevernever was crazy. Still, broken down like that it made a strange kind of sense. The rule of the Nevernever is “if you can imagine it, it exists.” I just never thought of what that meant if more than one person imagined the same thing… or believed in the same thing, even. What that meant was that God… probably did exist, in some form; but not as the world-creating omnipotent being my Mom believed he was – not exactly, anyway. But even with that in mind, stuff still didn’t make sense.
“So… are they souls or… imagination?” I asked.
Zeroelle breathed a laugh and raised a hand to cover her mouth when she did. “That, is a big question.” She said, “Bringing to account what existence truly is. I don’t know the answer to that. Honestly? That answer might vary depending on what you truly believe. What isn’t a question, however, is whether a ghost can be combated or not. It can.”
“The same way I beat the Boo Hags?” I immediately suggested, and Zeroelle nodded.
“Among other things, I think.” She said, “But you know, there are better people than me who can tell you more about ghosts. Alexandra and I happen to know a guy… and this guy happens to owe my darling wife a few favours. When she’s done crushing the pelvis of some poor sod and makes it home, I can talk to her about calling in that favour and getting you on the fast track to ghost-busting. Tell me, do you think this ghost is dangerous?”
I didn’t even have to think about that. I swallowed when the thought of suffocating tried to squeeze my throat closed. I nodded.
“I know better than to question a Seer’s judgement.” Zeroelle said, dipping her head down to go back to her work, “Right then. This ghost could be a danger to more than just you, I think. Alexandra and I will do what we can to get you set up. In the meantime, try to keep an eye on it. You know which eye I mean.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath, but I tried to do it through my mouth so I didn’t have to smell that clover oil. I tasted it instead, so I let that breath out earlier than I wanted to. “Can the ghost leave the bathroom?” I asked through a cough.
“Generally? No.” Zeroelle answered, sliding her blade carefully along her thigh so she could polish the other end of it near the tip, “But then, that depends on its power. Weaker spiritual beings aren’t able to do whatever they want. Stronger ones, however? Sometimes they can be a little tricky. It’d be safe to keep an eye out just in case. Just push your will a little, it’ll push back.”
“Could I use a ward? Like the one Alex put on my house?” I asked, trying to make for an easy way to deal with the problem. The fact was, I wasn’t going to be able to keep an eye on that bathroom all the time.
“Yes, but it would be immediately tampered with, I bet.” She answered me, staying focused on her polishing. She took a moment to re-soak the cloth she was using, shooting me a look with a little grin, “Alexandra tends to draw the eye, too. She wouldn’t have the time to put up a ward with any hint of subtlety. That, partnered with the fact that she’s barred from Newshore High’s premises, means we’ll have to rely on old-fashioned surveillance.”
I watched her as she stood from her spot, set her cloth down, and then took up the sword in both hands. When she held it, I thought she looked kind of goofy. There she was in a button-down too big for her and some Spanx, holding a big, impressive-looking sword that didn’t fit with anything other than the antiques around the basement. I probably should have noticed at the time that she didn’t seem bothered holding it, but I won’t pretend I knew how heavy a real claymore sword was. I cocked a brow and opened my mouth to speak, but Zeroelle cut me off with a quick, “Don’t ask.” I listened, and just closed my mouth. I guess I didn’t need to know why Alex wasn’t allowed at the school. I probably didn’t really want to know, actually.
There was a silence then that lasted for several seconds as I looked around the basement and tried to think of what to say or do. Zeroelle just maintained her really big sword as if I wasn’t even in the same room as her. Eventually I spoke up and asked, “So… there are people who know about ghosts?”
Zeroelle looked up as if the thought of the topic had just occurred to her. “Oh, yes.” She answered, “There are a few kinds of magically-gifted people who hold a connection to spirits and ghosts. They can get pretty particular though. What kinds have you heard of?”
“Uh…” I dipped my head down to think about ghost-related professions… more traditional ones that didn’t include the Ghostbusters or the Ghost Hunters on TV. “I dunno, uh… Necromancers and Voodoo guys?” I felt pretty certain that I didn’t even know the half of it.
Zeroelle nodded. “Both exist, and our mutual friend is in fact a Necromancer,” She explained, “A commander of the dead, one who mingles life and death into an often-rejected result. There aren’t many practicing magicians who would dare get involved with that – it’s usually cause for the righteous sorts to get you locked up. I don’t really suggest dabbling in it yourself… it takes a sort of strain that most minds can’t handle.”
Zeroelle just let me be unsettled with that and continued, “Beyond that, there are Mediums. The ‘professional’ term some magicians use for these people is ‘Ectomancer.’ These are the people who can communicate with the dead, and for some reason have some connection between them and, rather specifically, ghosts. These are the people who may see the dead, everything from the weakest spiritual entities to the strongest; just phasing in and out of the mortal world, invisible to most. Most of them go bonkers, and then some of them actually get a handle on the craft.”
I had a sudden thought and kind of rubbed my fingers together as I struggled to remember something. “Kind of like that, uh… there’s this stupid show on TV,” I said, “About someone who can talk to the dead and she does this thing and gives people closure. I always thought it was bullshit.”
“Long Island Medium, I’ve seen the program.” Zeroelle rolled her eyes, “It’s absolute hogwash. That woman is a fraud if ever I saw one, and I’ve seen plenty. Still, you’ll find that the legitimate practice is much like that – séances, candles, random phone calls from the dead… It’s all very much truth, but some people have taken to performing it rather than practicing. It’s because of that, that actual, legitimate Mediums call themselves Ectomancers. It’s a way of distinguishing the real from the fake. Even then, they often have to prove their claims if ever they’re brought to question.”
“And this is different from a Necromancer how?” I asked.
Zeroelle chuckled. She finished polishing the sword so she turned it downward and stabbed the concrete floor with the blade’s tip. The scary part was that it dug inside maybe an inch. “Necromancers manipulate the dead, not just commune with them. In a way, they have a greater understanding of ghosts because they can directly interact with them. They can raise zombies, perform blood magic, all that sort of thing. Everything you’ve heard about Necromancers is absolutely true and they’re often some of the most deplorable creatures on the face of the Earth. Our friend is no exception – he’s right mad in the head and has little moral boundary.”
“And you’re friends with that guy?” I asked, scrunching up my face.
Zeroelle shrugged her shoulders, “Certainly, I don’t see why not.”
“But Necromancy is bad?” I asked.
Zeroelle nodded with a big smile.
“So… don’t do it.” I suggested, waiting for her nod. She nodded again.
“Okay then.” I said, starting to get uncomfortable.
“If you want to go around digging up dead bodies and mutilating them, making them dance for you like puppets, then be my guest.” Zeroelle shrugged, “Such things have an adverse effect on the mind, magic or no magic.”
I cringed, “No thank you.”
“That’s probably for the best.” Zeroelle grinned, “Now, if that’s everything…”
“I guess it is?” I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. It didn’t sound like anything else could be done until we got in touch with this friend of Alex and Zeroelle’s anyway, so I was kind of stuck. Zeroelle just tilted her head toward the stairs in a very silent invitation for me to leave. It was kind of awkward, but I said goodbye and walked out by her instruction. I went upstairs, strapped my boots back on, and left to head home.
I had my job basically spelled out for me: watch and wait. The only downside to that was that I’d have to hang out in the hall outside that bathroom as much as I could, and I wasn’t really feeling like that was going to be a lot of fun. Not only that, but I was going to look pretty weird just sulking around outside of a boys’ bathroom, and I really didn’t need that in my life, especially right then.
But when it comes to choosing between being socially invisible and potentially protecting the other students from a ghost, well… it was going to suck big time, but I didn’t really have much of a choice. As I walked home I took a deep breath and let it out in a slow, heavy sigh. I just had to get used to the idea that basically nobody was going to like me for the rest of my natural life. At that point, I was beyond crying and being really sad about it; I’d gone straight into frustration. There wasn’t anything I could do about the situation other than be mad, so it was probably better if I focused on this ghost thing.
I did everything I could to remind myself of that. I tried thinking about new spells I could try out – something that could protect me from being tossed around and suffocated, or just something that would smack the ghost around but not cause any major property damage. I could have done all that stuff, but instead when I sat down at home I got distracted with my computer. A little more frustration over thoughts of my current situation and I eventually found myself on Facebook, angrily stalking Simon and Evangeline both for a little while.
I just looked at their publicly available pictures, some public posts. It had to be public, because it wasn’t like I was their friend or anything. Most of the time it was stupid memes and pictures taken in a number of places. They seemed to go to so many parties or get-togethers or whatever, always posing for selfies with groups and things like that. Evangeline’s page had constant status updates on literally every shopping trip she ever went on and who she went with. She posted every time she was going to see a movie, she let everyone know when she was heading to a party… heck she even boasted about numerous dates she’d been on.
And then there was me. I set fire to a school bathroom, burned half of my dress all to shit, got sent home and was sitting alone on my bed on a Thursday night. I’ve said I try not to let stuff bother me when it comes to what other people say and do, but I can’t deny it… I compared myself to them pretty harshly. They had a billion friends and I had one guy who I guessed was my friend, but I couldn’t figure out why. I never went to parties – I never got invited to parties – and the last time I went out and saw a movie was with my family.
I don’t like people as a general thing most of the time. I knew deep down that I didn’t even want to go to big, loud parties where people probably got stoned and drunk and made complete idiots of themselves. I couldn’t handle a phone contact list of fifty people, or juggle a huge social life with school and Seer stuff. But even though I knew that, I couldn’t stop thinking that if I went to my Facebook page… there wouldn’t be anything there. I hadn’t even updated the damn thing in a couple months and the only posts that showed up on my wall were from people I was related to, like birthday wishes and stuff.
I had no pictures that I could look back on or anything like that. The only relationship announcement I think I’d ever put out would be something like, “Cookie is now in a relationship with her right hand.” So even if I didn’t want to be some social monarch, I did want… something, anything really, to prove that my sixteen years on this planet weren’t a complete waste of space, air, and time.
I figured it wasn’t a total waste, because I did save the town from a bunch of Boo Hags and a Boo Daddy. I stopped four extremely dangerous monsters from running around and eventually killing people. That was the best thing I’d ever done in my entire life, and I thought that if people knew about it then… maybe they’d look at me differently? Who wouldn’t think that a magic-wielding girl is cool? But I couldn’t just tell people that kind of stuff. Instead people like Simon and Evangeline – people safe because of me – were just going to keep thinking that I was weird and gross.
I really wasn’t thinking when I decided to message Simon, but I had the prompt up and typed out a quick message.
“Hey look, I know you don’t want to talk to me. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for making you feel uncomfortable okay? I didn’t mean it and I’m really sorry.”
It was a short, sweet message that I immediately regretted even typing up when I clicked the button on-screen to send it away. What the heck was I even thinking trying to talk to him? He wasn’t going to answer me and I knew it.
“Ugh, forget it,” I sighed and threw myself backward onto my bed in surrender, “Just fucking forget it. Pointless. This is pointless.”
Talking down to myself didn’t make me feel any better. I ended up just closing my laptop and putting it next to me so I could pull my blanket around me like a cocoon of misery. I rolled onto my side and curled up in a little ball and took off my glasses and put them on my end table. There was nothing I could do to stop my life from being absolute shit, so I figured why bother? I reminded myself again that it would have been better if I just focused on the ghost.
It wasn’t like anyone else could do anything about it.
Chapter 5
So, I woke up. I had my morning shower, I had my breakfast, and I threw on some of the frumpiest looking clothing I had. The denim skirt did not go well at all with the thick red sweatshirt I wore and the faded college football team logo didn’t suit me at all. I just didn’t care at that point – people were lucky I decided to even brush my teeth and put deodorant on. I vaguely resembled a regular person when I stepped out to go catch the bus with my sister, backpack slung over my shoulder. I had not been looking forward to the day, because I wouldn’t be able to even enjoy my down-time at school. I was set to guard that bathroom and make sure no one went inside. All day long.
So, I get to school and I make sure to pass by the bathroom on the way to my first class. I slowed to a stop as I passed by the door and I stood just outside it during the morning hustle. Closing my eyes, I concentrated. I focused my will to push out from my body – it was something I still had a little trouble with. I could still feel the veil pushing back on me whenever I tried, and it felt really insistent sometimes. It was hard to concentrate too, with everyone walking around me and some people bumping into me. Other students would collide with me and then blame me, despite the fact I’d been standing there for a while before they even came along.
Eventually I got it. It’s weird pushing your sense of self past physical objects, and it’s far from easy. It helped that I had been there before, I knew exactly what I was going to find on the other side of the door, now blocked off by caution tape and a big, fat out of order sign. It’s like trying to wiggle through the crack under the door, it felt as if I were trying to limbo under a very low pole. Of course, I was just standing there as still as a statue staring at the door. I smartly kept my phone in my hand lifted at just such an angle that it could have tricked people into thinking I was just distracted with a text or something. At least, I hoped I was being that sneaky.
There was definitely a presence beyond that door. I could feel the icy touch of that damn ghost from out in the hall. It gave me goosebumps. As far as anything active though? Nothing. There was no movement or any fluctuations in the energies that surrounded that bathroom. Maybe the ghost was asleep or something… I wasn’t sure; did ghosts sleep?
With nothing jumping out at me, I broke my focus and realized it was time to get going. I hurried to class and still made it a few minutes early.
I made it a point to keep going back throughout the day to check on things. After my first class, nothing had changed. I took my lunch and sat on the floor next to the bathroom door to wait it out and make sure nothing happened, and still nothing came. That was clearly good news, but I was starting to wish that if something were going to happen, that it’d hurry up and actually happen. I didn’t like hanging around that bathroom all day, and I was starting to suspect that people were getting a bit suspicious. The last thing I needed was people thinking I was up to some stalker thing again… it was a boy’s bathroom after all. I wanted to think people would be smart enough to factor in that nobody could actually go into the bathroom, but I never put the ability to be complete morons past the general populace.
Still, I sat there like a good little soldier, every now and then focusing on the aura from the ghost. It was in there, there was no doubt about that; it just wasn’t doing anything. I thought maybe someone had to enter the bathroom to be at risk. That made sense to me – ghosts couldn’t just wander around wherever they wanted, not even in movies or books. They were always stuck somewhere, tethered to one spot. It was usually the spot where they died. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the case. Did Mr. Coyote Ghost die in that bathroom? If so, how? Was it an accident? Was he murdered? Ghosts didn’t just stick around for no reason. Something about that guy and something about that room had to be special. I didn’t even know the rules of ghosts, but I knew that had to be true.
I was just getting to the end of my cheese and mayonnaise sandwich when I spotted Simon coming down the hall. The moment I saw him, he saw me too. He gave me this look, the kind of look where I knew he’d gotten that Facebook message and I knew he wasn’t happy about it. I thought he was going to just pass on by, but when he lifted his foot to pass over my outstretched boot, he stomped down hard onto my foot. It was quick, made to seem like an accident, but I was watching him so closely that I could tell by the way he just shoved his foot down, he stomped on my foot on purpose. Now, it didn’t hurt overly much. As hot as Simon was, he had legs like a teenage girl, which was part of what made him hot but not something that was going to give him a whole lot of weight.
He kind of stumbled for his effort and I flinched, jerking my foot back even though the impact wouldn’t hurt.
“Excusez-moi, dick.” I said. I put the most venomous emphasis on the word “dick” I could. If I had pumped any more hate into it, I probably would have launched a shockwave of kinetic force right at him. I felt justified in doing it, and I felt just flat out angry until he stopped. He stopped with his friends and he turned around and when he did I just kind of froze. Looking back on it, I really shouldn’t have been scared of him, but I just didn’t know what was going to come next.
He stepped back over to me, all skinny black pants and some white t-shirt, everything clashing with his black and white fur and his hair. Those honey-yellow eyes of his had an angry look in them. It was a weird sort of angry look, a kind I’d never seen anyone make before.
“I thought you were supposed to stay away from me!” He said. These were probably some of the first actual words he’d said to me in a really, really long time. It stabbed me right through my heart. My anger quickly bled away to sadness.
“Huh?” I kind of whimpered my response. Not on purpose. I couldn’t help it.
“Don’t play dumb, you started sending me Facebook messages!” He scolded me.
I felt the need to correct him, and quick. “I sent you one, and it was an apology!” I rebutted.
An apology. People were looking at me. I realized pretty darn quick that by apologizing, I was admitting wrong. I was, honestly. I’d screwed up bad. What other people probably thought, though, was that I was trying to just shove everything under the rug or something. I looked around and I could see it on their faces. Everyone in earshot looked like they just learned that I really was a stalker. They looked at me with disgust. In front of maybe five people, judgement was passed on me so quickly that I had no hope in hell of stopping it.
“Oh fuck off.” I glared around.
“You fuck off! Leave me alone, alright? Never talk to me again. Ever. No Facebook messages, no nothing.” Simon ripped into me. What’s worse was that his friends, a couple of other boys, seemed to be rooting him on. They encouraged him to tear me down like a couple of cavemen or something. It was frustrating and humiliating, because I had nobody there to back me up or defend me in any way.
I guess that was my fault.
“Man, do you have to be such a dick about this? It was just a mistake, you asshole.” I moved to stand up, because I wasn’t just going to sit there and take his shit any more. “There wasn’t even much to see, you tiny-dicked piece of shit.”
That got him. His eyes went big and he was stunned, as was damn near everyone around him. I wasn’t lying, by the way. Simon wasn’t the biggest boy downstairs, I’d gotten a decent enough look at him to determine that. I didn’t care at the time though; his size wasn’t that important to me. It was definitely important to him though. He wanted to come back at me with something similar but I saw the way he looked at my crotch. Good for him, I thought. Let him look. He could be jealous all he wanted, I didn’t even care.
Since he couldn’t come at me with any sort of witty retort, he instead decided to get physical. He didn’t hit me or anything, he just stepped up close and towered over me because I wasn’t very tall. He was probably hoping I’d back down or show some sign of being scared, but I knew that’s what he wanted. I’d seen more than enough idiots fight each other in high school to know that it was some big dick-waving contest to make someone in the middle of it look like a total wuss; so, I planted my feet and didn’t move an inch. He glared at me and I glared at him. Everyone gathered around us wanted us to start fighting or something, but it probably wasn’t going to happen.
“Tu ne seriez pas frappe une fille avec lunettes, c'est ça?” I asked him.
He was horrendously confused by my French, even though he’d been taking French classes as long as I had. Maybe he actually understood some of it and was confused when I referred to myself as a girl. Maybe he didn’t expect me to be so balls-out toward him. Either way he had no idea what to do with himself, especially when little ol’ me wasn’t going to just back down. I’d had pretty much enough of him and enough of everyone else, too. It almost felt like it’d be better if the thing people were gossiping about was how Simon punched me out. So, I just waited for one thing or another.
What I didn’t expect was the icy cold grip of death that slipped in through my spine.
Have you ever had every single one of your vertebrae just freeze? Not like seize, but actually freeze? It sure felt like that’s what happened to me for a split second when that stupid ghost came out of the bathroom and whipped through my body. My lungs may as well have been raisins for a split second and everything just got screwy. I would have fallen flat on my face if the moment wasn’t so crazy quick. He passed through me and straight ahead, where he smacked into Simon with a wispy splat. He didn’t come out the other side.
I had to take a second and figure out what the hell had just happened. I clutched my chest and panted for breath as Simon seemed to jolt upright like he’d been shocked or something. He trembled and jerked erratically for a few moments, then he just stopped. He went stone still, but his eyes were hugely wide. The ghost seemed to be gone. After passing through me it had disappeared, and probably hadn’t been visible for more than a second. Simon began to move after a moment, but his movements were stiff and strange. His fingers shook and he pawed at his own body weirdly. I could only stare as it occurred to me that Simon had been possessed.
He looked at me and he smiled. It was a wicked kind of smile, a smirk or something. It wasn’t right. It was especially not right considering the conversation we were just having.
“I finally found you.” He said.
He came at me fast, and I raised my hands to try and push him away but he grabbed my wrists. He pushed his weight forward to tip me back, pinning me back against the wall and holding my wrists there.
“What the fu...phrm?!”
He kissed me.
He kissed me and his tongue felt cold, and the energies around him were wrong. They made me queasy. I was so shocked I couldn’t react. His tongue probed my mouth and danced around mine like a snake. I wanted to gag or something. I didn’t know if he was a good kisser, I didn’t really have any point of reference at the time because no one had kissed me before. It didn’t matter if he was good though, it was that I was being French-kissed by a ghost suddenly. It didn’t feel like Simon on any level – it was just that stupid ghost wearing his skin.
His tongue kind of tasted like cigarettes. I exhaled, practically blowing snot in his face as I roughly tried to push him away. His grip tightened on my hands to keep me still and he weighed down on me, turning his head, knocking my nose with his like some clumsy jerk, and locking the kiss into place. His tongue was shoving against the inside of my cheeks. It was weird and gross and I felt violated and disgusted all at once. I stomped my feet and tried to twist my body and get away, but I just couldn’t.
Everyone was too surprised by the turn of events to think about stopping it, and I felt like I was in danger. Fortunately, ghost or not, that guy had to breathe. He pulled back from me eventually, letting me get my breath.
“Mabel.” He said to me, and he looked almost perversely happy to see me.
Well, I’d had enough of that. When he stepped back to talk, I was finally able to push forward and shove him away from me. “I’m not Mabel, you fuck!” I yelled, stepping forward to kick my other leg back and swing it forward. The weight of my boot slammed right up into his dick. I swear I bashed his balls into his own throat. He clenched right up and crumpled to the floor. I was on an adrenaline rush, so I was panting like an animal as I stood over him half-tempted to start kicking in his teeth with my platforms. I had to remember awful quick that what just happened wasn’t Simon’s fault, and the guy who kissed me wasn’t Simon either.
“What the fuck?!” Simon’s friends rushed to his side to pick him up off the floor while throwing curses at me. Simon swayed like a drunk boxer when he was pulled to his feet. My rush was ending and I started feeling uncomfortable and exposed. The situation was entirely out of hand.
“Bitch!” Simon hissed, back-handing me across the face about as hard as he could. It sure knocked the spit out of me and I damn near spun around. That wasn’t Simon’s strength, it wasn’t natural. He didn’t just smack me, he smacked my will. It was messed up, and it messed me up.
“Why are you always like this?!” Simon grabbed me and slammed my back against the wall, ripping out of his friends’ grasp to do it. He slammed me against the wall and then closed one of his hands around my throat. “You said you loved me! WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!” He kept screaming at me, but I couldn’t answer, because he’d cut off all air intake through my windpipe. He was crushing my throat by shoving his hand in and keeping me pinned against the wall. I couldn’t do anything against that, I just choked and weakly tried to pull his hand away.
“Dude, Simon, what are you doing?! Stop that shit!” One of Simon’s friends came to his side and tried to help me, which was a surprising turn of events.
“Jesus man, stop!” Another boy came and tried to pull him off, but he held on to my neck for dear life.
Have you ever been strangled? You start to feel pretty light-headed pretty quick when it’s done right. My head was pounding, and my ears felt funny. I think I was starting to black out, but I can’t really remember.
“Hey, fairy-boy!”
It was Percy who saved me. He yelled just loud enough to get Simon’s attention, and the second he looked over, Percy fed him a straight-arm punch with an awesome wind-up. The full force of it made Simon collapse onto the ground, freeing me to nearly fall. The others caught me and kept me standing and people were all around me in a moment to see if I was okay, while Percy stormed forward and continued to kick the living crap out of Simon. I could barely see past the crowd that gathered around me, but Percy gave Simon a good few kicks to the gut for good measure, making him cringe and writhe on the floor.
I coughed, trying to get my breath so I could stop him. “Percy, wait!” I wheezed.
Percy did stop, turning to look at me with his big bushy eyebrows raised high. He didn’t know why I told him to stop. To him, it was probably crazy. Simon pulled himself up off the floor, and he didn’t even stick around to yell at me some more. He took off down the hall as fast as he could, barreling past people in some kind of frantic rage. My first thought was that the ghost was getting away. I had no idea where he was going or what would happen, but I had to catch up with him. I started pushing on bodies, freeing myself from the crowd who were just as surprised as Percy to see me shoving them away. They were just trying to help, but I had bigger problems.
“Percy, we gotta catch him!” I said.
Percy was still confused. “What? Why?” He asked.
“Monster Forecast!” I answered.
Percy’s expression changed in an instant. While that sounded like gibberish to anyone else, he knew exactly what that meant. He grabbed my arm to pull me away from the boys and girls who’d gathered around to help, and then he took off in a run with me. “Hurry up then!” He said.
I was still thrown off from all the shit that had happened to me. I felt like I was dragging a pair of bricks with my feet. Percy was much faster than me, his long legs carrying him a heck of a lot further, not to mention he was an athlete. He tried to drag me along but I was nothing but dead weight. Eventually he let me go, and he bolted down the hall following where Simon had gone. He’d gone straight into the stairwell at the far end of the building, and Percy was after him in record time. He blew through the doors and I think I saw him leap over the railing in the stairs before the doors closed again.
“Cookie, are you alright?” A teacher had managed to stumble into the mess, and she took a gentle hold of my arm to try and check on me. I was gasping for breath and I had tears in my eyes, but I nodded anyway. In reality, I hurt in weird places. My jaw hurt for some reason. I just wanted to catch my breath and go, so I pushed the teacher aside as politely as I could to instead hurry down the hall, trying to follow Percy and Simon through the school.
I was so out-classed in terms of speed that when I got to the stairs the two of them were already outside. I could see them out the window that looked down over the front of the school. I didn’t see them for long though – they were running off the property. I made it down the stairs as quickly as I could to go after them, slamming the doors to the outside open with the full weight of my body and trying not to stop as I followed them down the street.
Newshore, as far as a city went, wasn’t a huge city. It wasn’t what one would call a metropolis. I think to be a metropolis you needed at least a few skyscrapers and several thousand more people than Newshore probably ever hoped to have. Still, it wasn’t as rural as my home town of Beach City. There was less green, more buildings, more cars, and a heck of a lot more crosswalks. Beach City was spread out. It had a lot of long stretches of road like the highway from my neighbourhood into the actual “downtown” plaza area. Newshore hit its downtown only a couple of blocks from the school, which was exactly where Simon seemed to be headed. He ran like a crazy person, not even stopping at the lights at the corner. He almost got hit by a car. An SUV screeched to a stop when he ran past, blaring its horn when Percy followed.
It became obvious that Simon was in danger. That ghost, whatever it was doing, was likely to get him injured or killed. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I caught up to them, but I had to do something to stop this paranormal freak-out.
So, we ran. We ran past the Dairy Queen, we ran past the small strip mall with a hairstylist and a Dominos. We ran past the bank across the street from a bank. We were getting to the place where the regular sidewalk was giving way to the downtown core’s small-tiled, red sidewalks. Where the buildings were two stories, with apartments above retail outlets and restaurants. There were a lot of people walking around, just doing their daily business. Maybe they were going to the doctor’s office, or just eating out, or heading to the pharmacy. I would have loved to be doing those normal things. Instead I was chasing a ghost-possessed boy through the city in broad daylight, and I didn’t think I was ever going to catch up.
Eventually though, Percy followed Simon into an alley. The alley was behind a three-story building in which there were apartments. The resident parking was in a small lot behind the building, where the narrow alley was only wide enough to fit one car coming in or out. I followed them inside a little while after, my feet flopping as I stomped along, just kind of flailing my limbs to keep running. I was panting, my mouth tasted like pennies, and my chest hurt. I was sweaty as hell, too. But finally, they stopped. Simon was clawing at the wooden fencing that surrounded the lot in an effort to climb it, but he couldn’t get a grip. Percy had managed to corner the guy, and was bent over, hands on his knees, panting for breath himself. The three of us were sweaty and exhausted, but even so Simon seemed completely out of his mind and anxious to get away.
“Who are you?! Mabel! MABEL!” Simon screamed when I moved next to Percy. We just kind of watched him as he started to sob and desperately tried to get away.
“What is he talking about?” Percy swallowed as he spoke, finally standing up straight.
“It’s the ghost,” I explained, “He called me Mabel when I saw him.”
“Ghost?” Percy repeated, reeling to turn to me, “There’s a ghost? What ghost? When did you see a ghost?”
I was still catching my breath so at first, I just grunted and panted. I shook my head in the smallest way possible, annoyed. “In the out of order bathroom! I saw a ghost there yesterday, it attacked me, and now it’s in him.”
I pointed at Simon’s back. He finally gave up trying to jump the fence and instead turned and hurried off somewhere else. He made a straight shot for the right, and Percy and I weren’t ready to step in his way, so he bolted right by. He ran for the corner of the fences, probably trying to find some other way out, and Percy and I moved to box him in.
“Why was he choking you?” Percy asked.
I was a little overwhelmed. I threw up my hands in a shrug. “I don’t know! God, he was kissing me a second before that! Maybe he thinks I’m someone else!”
“He kissed you?!” Percy was naturally surprised.
“Yeah right after I think he was gonna fight me!” I exhaustedly informed him.
His expression told plenty about how fucked up he thought that was. I just nodded at him in agreement. It was fucked up. Simon was still sobbing. He fell to his knees in the corner and was pushing gravel around with his hands, mumbling and muttering stuff that even I couldn’t really hear. Eventually he got louder, loud enough for me to hear. He was rocking back and forth by then.
“You were mine, you were my girl, you said you loved me, why? Why? Why?! You lied! Why did you lie?! Bitch. Fucking bitch. I love you! Why are you lying to me?! You’re my girl!” He ranted. He was hysterical. I just stared at him. I didn’t know what to do. I barely even knew what was going on.
“Hey, buddy.” Percy spoke up to try and grab his attention. Simon didn’t even respond. “Hey!” Percy yelled. Simon again didn’t even turn or twitch. He just kept ranting like a crazy person.
Simon reached for something at his feet. He grabbed it from a tuft of grass that was creeping out from under the fence. I barely got to see it as he clutched it in his hand and held it against his chest with his back to us. It was a piece of broken glass, one big enough to hold in a full palm.
“Oh shit.” I said, feeling my body break out in a sweat.
“What?” Percy asked me.
“He’s got a piece of glass!” I exclaimed, as Simon started wailing. He turned around and sat on the ground, his back against the fence, holding the piece of jagged glass so hard it was cutting into his hand. It was easier to see with his blood dripping around the edges. He held it against himself, sobbing and mumbling and shaking his head.
“Fuck you! Fuck you!” He yelled. When he lifted the glass to plunge it into himself, I finally just yelled at him.
“Stop! Stop, stop!” I shouted, scrambling forward with my hands out to try and… I don’t know, stop him?
It worked. Unlike when Percy yelled, Simon just stopped everything he was doing and looked right at me. I stopped advancing on him and just stood there staring back at him. He stopped moving entirely. He kept his arm up with the glass pointed straight down like a dagger ready to gut himself. He looked at nothing but me. I wasn’t sure how to go on past that point, but I felt a wave of relief wash over me when he stopped.
“Mabel?” He spoke out.
I had no idea who this Mabel person was, or why he seemed to think I was her. The guy was about two seconds to impaling his own body on a broken piece of a window or something though, so I did about the only thing I could think of to drag out the situation.
“Yeah.” I said, “Yeah. It’s me. Mabel.”
Now Percy was staring at me like I was insane. I felt crazy for suggesting that I was this person I didn’t even know. But in some twisted and deranged way, it worked. Simon lowered his arm and looked shocked to see me. He looked happy. “You came back!” He cried, letting his arm fall to his side where he dropped the piece of glass. “Does this mean you’ll actually go out with me?”
I opened my mouth but caught myself when I remembered that I had no idea what I was doing. I gave him a look, turning my head somewhat as I closed my mouth again to try and decide what I was supposed to do. I looked to Percy for answers, but he was just staring at me all doe-eyed, because he had no idea what to do either. I swallowed and turned my attention back on Simon. I stepped forward and got down to squat there, trying to look at him in the eyes. His eyes were… empty. Not like they were just holes in his head, but he looked like he wasn’t even really… seeing? He stared at me and barely blinked and his pupils were weirdly dilated.
“Uh, um…” I tried to think of the best way to answer. “Well, uh… I thought about it, yeah? And uh… I think… yes?”
I cringed a little and shrugged my shoulders at him.
He smiled and dropped his head back against the fence. He raised his hands and let out a big cheer. “Wooo!” He screamed at the top of his lungs, making me flinch. “I knew it!” he said, “I knew you loved me!”
I was blown away. So was Percy. We looked at each other in shock and awe. The hell was I doing? I barely had time to think. It was like improv, I just had to go with it.
“Yeah!” I said, trying not to sound too disingenuous, “I do! I l…”
I cleared my throat.
“I love you?”
God, I felt dirty just saying those words and not even remotely meaning them. My heart was pounding not out of romantic interest, but because I was afraid of what this guy was going to do. Yeah, “this guy.” I couldn’t even see him as Simon at that point, because I never knew Simon to be absolutely psychotic. It was easy to look at him as a stranger, too, because I think at that point any romantic interest I once had in Simon was one-hundred percent limp dick. But, once again, despite being the whipping boy of the universe, I felt the need to stick my neck out for some jerk who wouldn’t give me the time of day. It may have been utter crap, but the way Simon smiled when I said I loved him assured me that he wasn’t about to go slit his wrists open or something.
“Oh thank God.” He gushed, pushing toward me and snatching me up in a hug. He nearly knocked me down but I put my hands down behind me to keep from just falling flat on the pavement. He held me tight and stroked my hair as I just stiffly accepted the unwanted embrace.
“Augh, ew.” I fussed when I realized he was smearing blood into my hair. I pushed him away and he looked at me in blank-faced concern.
“What? What’s wrong now?” he asked.
“You’re bleeding, jeez.” He frowned. He looked at his hand and shrugged.
“I’m fine!” He insisted, “I’m fine when I’m with you.”
“You’re not fine, you idiot.” I huffed, pulling him roughly to his feet when I stood up. “Let’s go back to school and clean you up.”
He stood next to me and seemed compliant to do what I wanted. I didn’t even get a step though before he was on me again, stroking my face and trying to kiss my cheek. I shuddered in crazy discomfort and pushed him away. “Come on!” I stressed.
Percy followed us for a little while. As I walked back toward the school with Simon, he tried to hold my hand or put his arm around me, not seeming at all very shy to grab my ass. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want him to touch me or grab me. The irony didn’t escape me, even at the time. I spent five years of my life wanting him to do that kind of stuff to me and worse, but whenever he touched me it felt wrong. I could tell there was a dead guy in there controlling his every movement. I could feel it on a subconscious level that probably nobody else would feel. He was like a puppet, moving in ways that were meant to look natural but just… weren’t. And his touch felt cold, like he had cold hands all the time.
It wasn’t comfortable, but it was keeping him from trying to hurt himself so I went along with it.
“Percy!” I whisper-shouted at the monkey boy walking with us – someone Simon didn’t even seem to realize existed. “How do I get a ghost out of someone?!”
“I don’t know!” Percy leaned down beside me to whisper closer to my ear. “Isn’t that an exorcism?”
Simon pulled me closer to his side. I leaned away from him. “I don’t know how to do that!” I whispered back.
Percy was a bit taken aback too, looking between Simon and me as he tried to think up some kind of solution. “Okay, okay, I’ll uh… I’ll see if there’s anything in Dad’s shop that’ll say anything about it.” He said.
I let out a frustrated sigh. “How long do I have to do this? People are gonna notice!”
“What’s up?” Simon asked me, probably wondering what I was mumbling about.
“Nothing!” I said, faking a smile and patting his arm, “Nothing at all!”
“You crazy fuck.” I added under my breath.
“Okay, just, hang out with him for maybe one day and I should have something by tomorrow.” Percy assured me.
“I can’t go all day like this!” I argued, “I’m calling Zeroelle!”
“Yeah, you do that when you get a chance.” Percy agreed, stepping ahead of me and turning on his heels to look back at me. “I’ll check it out, I promise!”
He turned back again and ran back to school, leaving me walking with the freaky, possessed Simon with the bleedy hand. Silently I looked at him. He was smiling and staring straight ahead, in an uncanny valley kind of way. I studied him for a few hesitant seconds before I decided to just go for it. I focused, and opening my Third Eye I looked upon him for what he truly was.
Like a bad, faded image the ghost moved with Simon’s movements. Simon himself looked… bound. He was restrained in wires, sharp wires, ones that dug into his skin and compressed his fur. They wrapped around his face, they tugged at his arms and legs, and they dug into his chest to draw blood. This was metaphorical blood of course – his own soul, or soul-like thing or whatever the rules dictated living things had that made them live, was in pain. He was being forced by this supernatural entity to move the way it wanted, say what it wanted, and basically just do anything it wanted. He was a prisoner in his own body. He looked at me as I looked at him; his eyes could still move. I think he saw me, somehow. He looked afraid.
“What? Something on my face?” Simon asked.
I blinked my eyes and shook my head, closing my Third Eye and returning to reality. I rubbed the spot right in the middle of my forehead. “N… No. Sorry.” I said, letting out a deep breath I must have been holding.
Poor Simon. I felt bad for the guy, which was rich since not even half an hour before I was ready to punch him in the face. His perfect looks, his pretty eyes, his beautiful hair… it’d been ruined for me. The possession just made it worse. I felt bad for him, but the feeling didn’t come easy. I had to stop to think, to actually dwell on the idea that I had to almost force myself to sympathize with him. That was just the lowest of the low, wasn’t it? A very small part of me felt… happy that something bad was happening to him. All I had to think on though was just what was happening to him, and I knew nobody deserved that. Not even the guy who threw me under the bus.
I had to help him. If that meant being a ghost’s girlfriend for a little while… so be it.
I’d always wanted a boyfriend for as long as I could remember. Now that I technically had one in the form of a dead guy who seemed to have a very difficult time telling what was true and what wasn’t, my heart felt like it was being twisted crushed into pulp. I didn’t want things to be like that. I never wanted things to be like that. The first thing this “boyfriend” ever did to me was strangle me. That was far from the sort of relationship I ever pictured myself being in. Even though it was basically fake and for the benefit of someone’s actual life, it hurt. I felt hurt.
I suppose that’s what making a sacrifice feels like.
I got him back to school where we were late for class. I didn’t even care, I was more than prepared to skip the rest of the day if I had to. It was a boon in a way, because there was nobody in the halls to see us walking together. I took him to a bathroom to wash his hand off. He’d stopped bleeding by then, so it was an easy clean. He let me do it for the most part, walking him over to the sink and rinsing him off before grabbing wads of paper towel and wiping it clean. Maybe he thought it was romantic or sweet that I was taking care of him. Me? I was just worried.
A ghost didn’t have to worry about dying. Simon did.
Once I had him all cleaned up, he hugged me. I pushed on his chest because, frankly, I didn’t want to be hugged. It gave me goosebumps.
“I’m so glad you’ve finally come to your senses.” He said.
Not knowing what that was even about, I kind of squinted up at him. “Um, yeah? Me too.” I said, just trying to say whatever it was he wanted to hear.
He moved to kiss me and I leaned away from him. “No, no… No thank you.” I said, trying to smile through my discomfort.
“Come on.” He insisted, “We’re dating!”
“Yeah but, uh, class? We gotta go to class.” I tried reasoning with him. In my doing so, he looked really confused all of a sudden.
“Yeah, I…” He unfocused again, looking around the bathroom as if just then realizing he didn’t recognize his surroundings. I watched him, and I caught on quickly to what was happening. That ghost wasn’t Simon, he didn’t lead Simon’s life. He had no idea where he was or where he was supposed to be. “What classes? Where am I?” He asked.
I mouthed a curse word and pat him on the chest. “I’ll walk you there.” I said.
He seemed agreeable to that. The look on his face kind of melted away to blankness once again. “Thanks,” He said, “You’re the best, Mabel.”
There was that name again.
“Yeah,” I awkwardly laughed, “Yeah I am.”
Just don’t choke me, buddy. That’s what I was thinking.
Chapter 6
Imagine babysitting the rottenest kid you can. Things like tantrums come to mind; lots of screaming and yelling and crying. They never do what they’re told, and when their parents come home they don’t want to hear any of it. That’s bad. Mom is like that sometimes when I have to look after Fraise.
Imagine that several hundred times worse. That’s what I had to put up with to keep Simon out of trouble.
I called Zeroelle when I could excuse myself to the bathroom in my last class that day, and you know what she said? This friend of theirs, the necromancer who was supposed to teach me how to deal with ghosts? He wasn’t responding. They didn’t know why he wasn’t answering his calls, but they assumed he was neck-deep in some weird necromancer work. Zeroelle sent Alex to go fetch him. Alex had yet to come back, so I was stuck without that option. I explained to Zeroelle what was happening. She suggested that I chain him up in their basement, but I didn’t think that was a good idea. Something about letting him hang out in a basement full of heavy things, swords, and armor? It just didn’t appeal to me.
I had to get Simon from his classes and take him to each one afterward. When it came time to go home, that’s when I ran into a problem. Simon couldn’t be away from me too long; every time he was, the ghost possessing him would start to realize that it wasn’t in familiar surroundings. He started freaking out if I couldn’t be there to distract him.
“Well when can you get him there? I need him yesterday.” I said into the phone. It was getting close to the end of the day and I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with Simon.
“It takes time.” Zeroelle said. “Look, he keeps calling you Mabel, right? Clearly that’s someone he knows. It’s a clue to just who this ghost is. Has he ever said his name?”
“Not once.” I answered, “And he gets confused when I refer to him as Simon. I don’t really know what’s up with him.”
Zeroelle let out a frustrated sound. “I don’t know what to do. We just have to wait, we don’t have a choice.”
“Well what am I supposed to do? Bring him home?” I was getting annoyed. “Mom would lose her mind, not to mention his parents would lose their minds too. I can’t just kidnap him. I can’t think of a single good reason for him to be gone all night on a school night.”
“Well you have to buy more time.” Zeroelle stated the obvious. “Why not go out with him tonight?”
“Could I not?” I winced, “I just want this to be over.”
“Just spend the evening with him, we’ll try to figure something out as quickly as we can.” Zeroelle got short with me, “Hopefully we can drag Sidney’s ass out here before the night’s over.”
“Zeroelle, seriously.” I started to complain but she cut me off.
“Just do it.” She said, and then she hung up on me.
I blinked at my phone as I sat on the crapper in the bathroom. I wasn’t using it, I was just hiding for some sense of privacy while I made my call. This was mostly because Simon was getting super annoying. The guy was unstable. Maybe I should say the ghost inside him was unstable. The guy was seriously bi-polar. One minute he’s all happy and cuddly, in that gross, ice-cold ghostly sort of way. The next moment he was all upset, just full of doubt and asking me stupid questions like if I still liked him. For a little while I was starting to think he could sense that I didn’t really like him, but after the fifth time of him believing my bullshit answers I figured he was just that insecure.
Who the heck was that poor Mabel girl, I wondered. Did she ever put up with that? I was seriously starting to develop the biggest sympathy for her and I didn’t even know who she was.
I had to stop and think, so I gave myself a few extra moments. Just like when the Boo Hags had come around, I had to stop and surrender myself to this idea that this whole supernatural magician thing was my new job. It was, really, some kind of responsibility that hung over my head, more important than anything else. No, I didn’t want to go on a date with Simon… or even the ghost possessing Simon. I wanted neither, but that didn’t matter. I tried to stretch my thoughts out and look a bit further than my immediate here and now. In the long run, even if I had to do something incredibly stupid, it was going to be better to do something. It would beat sitting in a bathroom and moping.
The facts were simple. If I didn’t do anything, this ghost was going to drive Simon to probably kill himself. No matter how much I loathed Simon for embarrassing me on a grand scale, I didn't want him to die. For better or for worse, Simon was someone I knew for a long time. To have him just be removed was an idea that made me a little nervous – especially if I had the chance to do something to stop it. I had to put my trust in Alex and Zeroelle and their friend. I just had to believe that they would come through for me. Then there was Percy, too, I had to hope that he’d find something for me by the morning.
I still felt gross and… weak. That kiss that Simon had given me was lingering in my head, and not in an enjoyable way. It seemed like the worst thing ever. It took something I thought I wanted and gave it to me in the worst way possible – like if I had a craving for waffles, so someone just smashed frozen ones forcefully into my teeth. I guess if I had to put a word to it, I felt vulnerable. It had nothing to do with magic, or ghosts, or supernatural stuff. I just felt like I’d given something up, or maybe that it was taken from me. It was weird to think that way – I’d had sex before, I mean. Sex with an older woman. Sex with Alex. I wasn’t innocent, hell no. But you try being head over heels for someone for years and then having that all turn on you. I don’t know what part of it disappointed me more. It was a sad place.
I closed my eyes and smacked myself lightly on my cheeks.
“Alright.” I said to myself.
I tried to think. What would I even do to distract him? I wasn’t going to give up anything more for the sake of it – I wasn’t going to take this fake relationship too far. Dates, though, were new to me. I’d never been on a date before, and I always blamed it on a lack of anyone being interested in me. Honestly it was probably the other way around, too. Dates always sounded stressful. They were almost always awkward on TV. You never hear much about the ones that go well. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d always been kind of afraid to go on one. It wasn’t any better that my actual first “date” was going to be completely made up and entirely bullshit, for the sake of life or death. It was hard to get my head in the right place. Maybe if I’d actually wanted to go somewhere I could have thought of something quick. Instead I was drawing a blank.
I had no money. I only worked during the summer and I almost always blew that cash right away on something expensive – a new pair of boots, a video game, a computer thing, something like that. I didn’t think that even if Simon had money, he wasn’t going to spend it. This ghost of his, this thing inside of him, it got confused over the smallest things. It was like a minefield of triggers. At any moment, he could go off, and I was starting to realize that it had to do with things like computers and cell phones. I just thought about that when I was sitting there trying to make up a date – that ghost didn’t know what a computer was.
That ghost was old, wasn’t he?
That made things harder. If I wanted to avoid making him explode, I probably couldn’t go to the arcade on the boardwalk, or even the movies. That sucked, because a place where we could distract ourselves from each other was exactly the kind of place I wanted. I couldn’t sit in his basement and watch Netflix either… though I suspected he’d be all over the “and chill” part of that particular method. I started to wonder what my mom did on her dates when she was young. She would have been my age like forty years ago.
I was staring at a chip in the floor tile of the bathroom with some interest when an idea clicked in my head.
“Yes, that’ll do it.” I said to myself. The idea wasn’t as impersonal as I wanted, but I didn’t have much of a choice.
I got up and left the toilet stall I was hiding in to leave the bathroom. Simon was waiting for me outside. I actually didn’t expect him to be there, because class was still happening. I jumped when I almost ran into him, flinching obviously. “Guh!” I cried.
He laughed. “Scared you!” He said.
I blushed. What a friggin’ asshole. Stupid ghost.
“What are you doing?” I asked, annoyed.
“Math was hard, so I figured I’d come find you.” He said.
I squinted at him. “How did you know where I was?” I asked him. He just shrugged.
“Well,” I said, looking as monotonous and unimpressed as I could. I wanted to mess with him. “Sorry. Just got done takin’ a shit.”
That was a pretty image, wasn’t it? His face was priceless. I don’t know if it was more surprise or disgust that I’d say something like that, but it definitely caught him off guard. I couldn’t help but smirk.
“On that romantic note,” I started, smacking him on the chest too hard. He stumbled a little. “I have an idea.” I raised my eyebrow at him to illicit interest.
“What?” He asked.
“You and me…” I started, and his eyes lit up. “We should sneak out tonight. Spend a little time together.”
I’m convinced he was expecting something else, but if he was disappointed he didn’t show it. Of course, he didn’t quite show everything he was feeling anyway. It was almost like he’d go through loading screens, where his expression was completely and utterly blank. “Anything for you!” He said. He smiled, briefly, then was blank again. It was creepy.
“Okay…” I said. Taking a chance, I gambled on his surreal ability to locate me. “You know where my house is, right? Go there at, say, eight tonight and wait out by the road.”
He seemed to stare at me. Now loading…
“Okay.” He nodded, “I guess your parents wouldn’t like it much if they caught us together.”
Parents. Interesting. So far as I knew, I was parent, not parents.
“Right.” I said, “My dad would go nuts.”
He loaded up another response and nodded with a little smile. “Yeah, I guess.” It was a reserved sort of thing, kind of weird. There was a silence after. It gave me time to reinforce my suspicion, since I didn’t have a dad.
“So, eight then.” I said.
“Eight.” He nodded.
“Now go back to class.” I said, “And don’t look at other girls.”
Or their cell phones, for the love of God.
“I promise.” He nodded. Then he leaned in to kiss me. I wanted to just yank myself away, but instead I stiffly turned my head and let him kiss my cheek. It was uncomfortable, and cold. It left behind a feeling that was just cold and clammy and wrong. I forced a smile at him, and he was satisfied with that. He hurried off, a bit awkward, but giddy.
He seemed to listen to what I said consistently. I could make him do almost anything I wanted. I figured though if I pushed him too far, well... he'd probably strangle me again. I rubbed my cheek, trying to scrape away whatever smooch feeling he’d left behind there. I went back to my own class and just counted down the minutes until it was time to go home. I couldn’t concentrate on school with everything else on my mind.
Simon and I took the same bus home, did I never mention that? He lives in Beach City like I do, so I didn’t think anything of it when he followed me on and sat with me – the first time anyone willingly sat with me on my bus in a very, very long time. Most people who did usually ended up regretting it very quick, mostly because of my disinterest in getting to know them. What did catch my attention was when he got off the bus at the same time I did. He stepped off just behind me, and I was so not thinking about it that I hadn’t even noticed until I turned and managed to catch him out of the corner of my eye. There he was, stalking me in his clashing black pants and white shirt. Fortunately, Fraise wasn’t there to see me with him.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. He shrugged again.
Right, he probably didn’t know where Simon’s home was.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, what are you going to do until eight?” I asked him, putting my hands on my hips.
“I don’t know, wait?” He seemed confused.
I sighed. “Just… stay out of sight, okay?” I requested. He promised me he would, so I quickly made my way back to my house. Fraise hadn’t shown up yet, but if I was fast I should have been able to make it back to the bus stop for her to arrive. I directed Simon to my home, which was thankfully surrounded by a fair bit of forest so there were plenty of places for him to hide out. I didn’t care where he hid, as long as he hid somewhere and wasn’t seen. He decided to step into the thick woods and plonk down somewhere in the dirt with his backpack. He told me he loved me and that he’d just be out there for the next over four hours, waiting for eight.
Maybe eight wasn’t going to work. I’d deal with it later. I told him to stay put and that I’d see about coming out earlier if he was just going to stay there, then I ran back to the bus stop. I came up to see Fraise waiting there for me. She was confused as to why I came running up from down the street. I told her that I came home a little earlier than usual and she bought the excuse. I walked her home as normal then, trying to ignore that just to the left of my property there was a possessed panda guy sitting out in the woods.
I couldn’t leave him out there for long, so when I got home I quickly took off my boots and started rummaging around the house. Mom wasn’t home, she never was that early, so I didn’t have to worry about explaining myself to her. Of course, if I took too long I’d have to, so I had to be fast. I ignored my little sister when she got curious, telling her to go ahead and play games in her room or something and leave me alone. She was probably used to my picky social behavior, so she did what I told her. Maybe she just didn’t have it in her to argue with me at the time. Since she was out of the way, I gathered everything quickly.
I got a loaf of bread and all the cheese slices we had. I took sandwich meats, thin-cut slices of chicken that were cut so thin in fact that they barely had anything I’d call meat on them, which my mom used on her sandwiches. I took the mayonnaise and the mustard. I took a couple cans of Coke from the bottom drawer. I shoved all these things into my bag, trying to be careful at least not to squash the bread. I was too hurried to think of anything else, so I went for the next thing. Not far from the door leading to the basement was another door, a smaller one, which housed a small closet. We kept a bunch of spare sheets and stuff in there. I took one of the bigger spare blankets I could find, which was a thick brown one with a yellow illustration of a tiger on it. I couldn’t stuff it into my bag, it was too big to fit, so I kept it under my arm instead.
I was about to do something very stupid, something my mom was going to rip me a new asshole for. I didn’t have the time to wait for her to get home though, so I had no real choice. I was going to leave Fraise on her own, who was only eleven and not old enough to look after herself. I went to her room and looked in to see her just amusing herself with one of the giant stuffed animals in her room. She was kind of wrestling a big brown teddy bear as big as she was. It was a playful wrestle, one she struggled to do over her own giant boobs. It looked funny seeing her trying to roll her skinny little body over them to get at the big, bulky toy.
“Fraise, I gotta go out,” I said, “Don’t do anything while I’m gone.”
She was confused of course. She turned her head, throwing her dirty blonde corkscrews around as she looked at me. “What? Where are you going?” She asked.
I paused to think, looking at some corner of her creamy-yellow walls. “… Remember when that monster got into my room, and I took care of it?” I asked her. Fraise, aside from Percy, had been one of the only people to actually see something from the Nevernever. It scared the crap out of her when she’d seen it, and it kind of galvanized me at the time.
She nodded to my question like it was any old thing. “Yeah, so?” She asked.
“I have to go do that again, okay?” I said, “Someone’s in trouble.”
The look on her face was one of sheer shock. “What do I tell Momma?” She asked, rolling onto her feet and bounding toward me. This line of reasoning was working for me. I’d convinced Fraise to keep the whole monster thing a secret, and she seemed happy to go along with it.
“Don’t tell her anything,” I said, “Just pretend I’m in my room.”
She wrinkled her eyebrows. Yeah, it didn’t seem like a good idea, and even she knew it. “Okay.” She said, uncertain.
“Alright.” I nodded in a hurry, “I’ll be back as soon as I can!”
That was wishful thinking. I was going to be stuck with Simon all night. The second mom realized I wasn’t in the house I was going to be up Shit Creek. I just ignored those thoughts and instead hurried for the front door. I put my boots back on and bolted outside, slamming the door behind me when I went.
“Mabel?” I could hear Simon calling out for me. He was distressed. I’d left him alone too long.
I almost ran to him. I found him just pacing around in circles, lost and panicked, even though he could see my house clear as day from where he was. He’d barely gotten three feet into the thin tree line that separated my lawn from my neighbour’s. “I’m here!” I called to him, “Jeez, man, seriously. I was only gone for a few minutes you big baby.”
“Shut up!” He yelled at me, angry. I glared at him but shut up anyway. When I didn’t say anything for a while, he calmed right away. It was like he was just switching between masks… I remembered the ghost doing something similar. Fuzzy static, then a different expression. “What are you doing?” He asked, “Where did you go? Why did you leave me?”
I rolled my eyes. “I was getting stuff for our date.” I explained through grit teeth, trying to keep my patience. “We’re having a picnic. On the hill.”
I walked and he followed. I stepped out to nearly the street in front of my house and I pointed to the taller of the two hills that acted like a gateway into the little valley my neighbourhood sat in. For as long as I could remember, my brothers and sisters called that pair of hills “Big Bertha.” It was a stupid name, and racked with innuendo when you considered Bertha to be a woman’s name, and associating it with large… tracks of land. Still, silly or not, it was the only place I could think of that was both super close to my house – so I wasn’t going to be too far away when mom was ready to kill me – and it was private. Nobody was going to be up there. Nobody ever was.
“Weren’t we going to do that later?” Simon asked.
“Yeah well if you’re not going to go home, we might as well do it now.” It was hard to keep the agitation out of my voice.
He paused, then he smiled. “Okay!” He said. He was just happy to be going. I wish I could say the same.
So, carrying everything I’d gathered up by myself since he wasn’t going to help me, we made for the taller of the two hills. They’re comparable mounds of grass and dirt that are many, many feet taller than my house. They were steep, too, the angle my feet went on as I climbed up was a bit painful. I remembered climbing it when I was a kid. My older brother liked going up there for seemingly no reason at all and I didn’t mind following him. I used to get down on my hands and feet and scamper up the slope like a little monkey or something. I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that now. I was too old for that kind of stuff. I trudged up in a march the whole way. I was panting and puffing when I finally did reach the top.
It was still nice from up there, but I didn’t remember until then just how nice. When I turned to look back out over everything, my entire neighbourhood stretched out before me. I could see every house except for the ones that broke off from the loop past the edge of the woods that swallowed up three sides of my house. There was thick forest around every side of us, just fencing us off from everything. Beyond the trees in the distance I knew there was a golf course, just past a little trail that came out between two ditches. I just couldn’t see it through there. That was to my left, and to my right was the soccer field that nobody ever played on. The afternoon sun was going to set behind the tree line soon and make the sky a pretty shade of pink and blue and orange. I just felt so high up off the ground and it’d been a long time since I was there last.
Of course, that was ruined when possessed Simon stepped up the hill to catch up with me. Forget bringing a book up there some time, I had a quasi-date to go on.
I laid out the blanket and got out all the food. Of course, he didn’t help or anything, he just stood there like a doofus until everything was set and I sat down on the blanket, which was now getting dirty on the bottom. I’d have to wash it without mom noticing. Simon sat down next to me, too close, so I started making sandwiches for us to be too busy to snuggle. I forgot to take a knife so I spread mayonnaise with my finger. I made one for him and one for me and passed the food off, giving him a Coke to boot.
Then I sat there and ate, feeling incredibly awkward. I got that droning feeling in my brain that you get when you’re bored, you know? I didn’t want to be up there. No matter how much for the good of Simon’s safety it was, I couldn’t deny wanting to be just about anywhere else. We ate in silence. Thankfully Simon was alright with just doing that. It only took a few minutes to eat a sandwich though, and drink most of the soda. Once that was done it was just us, and we were sitting there looking out over everything. It was kind of cold, honestly. It had been warm most of the day but I forgot that it was pretty much almost autumn, so as the sun got lower the air got colder. A lot colder. That sucked because Simon couldn’t provide me with any warmth even if I was willing to go looking for it. His touch was colder than the air.
I shivered when he put his arm around me. Again, I felt the weird, twisted sensation of the supernatural spirit impressing itself on my innate magical energies.
I tried to think of something to talk about as quick as I could. We’d been sitting there for minutes and we weren’t talking.
I got this idea in my head that I wasn’t talking to Simon. I reminded myself over and over that the person I was with was only wearing Simon. Inside that pretty exterior was someone else; someone from another time and another place that was dead. Zeroelle had asked me if he’d ever told me his name and he hadn’t. How did I make him do that? I became very curious to know just who I was dealing with, but I had to bring it up in a logical way.
“Hey,” I said, “Uh, remember how we met?”
I looked at him, and he stared blankly off into the distance for a while, then he blinked his eyes and smiled. “Yeah I remember.” He said. Then he stopped. He didn’t elaborate.
God damnit creepy ghost guy. I will spell-fuck your face-hole the first chance I get.
“Reeeeeally?” I tried to be coy.
“Really!” He said, “It was at the game, remember?”
The game?
“Which game?” I asked. He looked at me as if I was crazy.
“The home game. Remember?” He quizzed me. I just stared at him and shrugged. “The one between us and the Smashers?”
I tried to think of who “the Smashers” were. Some kind of sports team, obviously. I couldn’t remember any team with that name. Of course, I don’t like sports, so I probably don’t know any team names. What was our school’s team named? I forgot.
“Oh… right,” I said, “I was there watching and you, uh…”
Simon nodded me along. “Sat next to you,” He continued.
“Right, yeah,” I said, “And then we…”
“Talked.”
I waited for more but more never came. I kind of squinted at him with one eye. “We sat together and talked?” I asked him, “That’s it?”
“You really don’t remember.” Possessed Simon looked hurt.
I sat up a little. “Sorry! I, uh… go to a lot of games!” I tried to explain myself, almost forgetting that he saw me as someone I had never met. I didn’t know what lies to tell.
He turned to face me more. “You were cold! I gave you my letterman jacket!”
“Letterman jacket?!” The words just popped out of my face before I could even think of it, “What like those jocks would do in the old days?”
He gave me a weird look and I stopped laughing at his old sensibilities when I realized I was seriously pushing his buttons and probably acting way out of character. “I mean,” I started, “That’s a sweet gesture. I guess.”
He stared at me for a long time. He looked me right in the eyes. After a long silence he asked me, “Who are you?”
Shit.
“Mabel!” I insisted.
“No!” He shouted at me, and things got a little violent pretty quickly. He tore his arm away from me and shoved me as he scrambled to his feet. “You’re not! You’re not Mabel! You’re a fake!” He was screaming at me suddenly and I got a little startled. I leaned away from him, one hand planted on the blanket and one foot flat, ready to just jump up if I had to.
“I am, I swear!” I lied. He could see right through it though. He started shaking and his face got all twisted into a sad, angry sobbing. Damnit, I’d fucked it all up.
“No, you’re not!!” He yelled, kicking at the ground, missing the blanket and kicking up a cloud of sand that got dirt all in my face. I tried to cover myself with my arm but couldn’t stop tiny specks of itchy dirt from getting on my lips and glasses. I lowered my arm quickly and saw that he’d kicked more dirt around all over everything – even into my open jar of mayonnaise. I don’t know what it was about the mayo that set me off. Nobody kicks fucking dirt into my tangy mayo.
I got to my feet quickly and moved back on him. I was angry, and I was going to let him know it. “You know what?! I’m not Mabel! Mabel’s dead! You’re dead! You’re a ghost inside someone else’s body!”
I cut him down like a damn samurai. He seemed to recoil from the shock of my words. Maybe I wasn’t being careful, maybe my emotions were sending out little bits of my will to give everything I was saying some substance. Will, I’ve found, isn’t completely invisible to mortals. It’s unable to be seen or even understood by most, but when you use it in certain ways, they feel it. I could call someone a cock-sucker, and that would kind of put them off. But if I pumped just a little bit of magic into those words, even if they’re not magic words, they could hit with impact. There was an aura around an angry spell-caster that had the natural tendency to make normal folk really nervous.
But the interesting thing was when he touched me, I could feel it on a subconscious level. Every interaction he had with me communicated on the same supernatural, beneath-the-skin level that my own magical power came from. When he hit me, he hit that power. When he yelled at me, he was directly interacting with my aura. Maybe that’s why he scared me so much, maybe that’s why I got so angry at him so quickly. Maybe that’s why when he practically molested me, it felt deeper than any regular person could have touched. So, when I returned the favour in kind, letting bits of anger form metaphysical sparks in the air with every world I spoke, it hit him. It hit the ghost beneath the surface of Simon’s mortal form.
“D… Dead?” He whimpered. Tears were welling up and making his honey-yellow eyes all glossy and shiny. They trickled down his face. I couldn’t feel sorry for him.
“Yes.” I said, “Dead. Whoever you are, you’re possessing the body of someone else! You’re possessing the body of Simon Oliver!”
I spoke with angry conviction and he stepped back away from me when I moved closer. He trembled in fear and he stumbled on a patch of long grass onto his butt in the dirt. “No.” He practically pleaded with me, shaking his head. “No, no, that’s wrong. That’s not true. You’re lying! You’re a liar! You pretended to be Mabel, now you’re lying to me again!”
I remembered then, in that moment, about what a little fairy once told me about full names. About how they have power in the Nevernever, and how they have power over people. When I introduced myself to a creature once he stopped me before I could give him my last name.
“You’re in the body of Simon Kelton Oliver!” I said, loud and clear. I pushed a bit of my power into Simon’s full name. Of course, I knew it by heart. I’d memorized it once upon a time.
Simon convulsed, he grabbed his head and he thrashed around on the ground, almost rolling down the hill a couple of times. He kicked his feet, stomping them into the dirt. He screamed. He wailed like a banshee as loud as he could, in this high-pitched squeal that didn’t seem natural coming from him. “NO!” He screamed at me again. I may as well have been waterboarding this poor guy. I was shocked at the reaction, but interested. So, I did it again.
“Simon Kelton Oliver!” I shouted, “Let me talk to Simon, ghost!”
“What?! No!” Simon curled up into a ball on his side, then lashed out and bent backwards at an angle that had to be uncomfortable. “You lying bitch! Why are you always lying to me?!”
“I met Simon in the sixth grade on the playground at Beach City Elementary!” I exclaimed, stepping close to him to stand over him. I was letting my energy run wild at that point. “He was nice to me! I’m talking to him! Not you, spirit!”
“Guh! What the hell is going on?!” Simon screamed again, but I felt something around him kind of… shudder? The ghost must have lapsed. For a second I saw Simon, scared and confused, seemingly fighting with himself. He stared at himself, probably not knowing where he was or how he got there. He looked at me, and I saw it in his eyes. He was there, for just a little bit. Then he was gone again. He growled and grit his teeth and grabbed his head and whipped around, rolling on the ground in a fit.
Then he was up. He threw himself at me from the ground and I wasn’t ready for that. All the will energy in the world wasn’t going to save me when he tackled me to the ground. That was physical contact, and it was trumping the hell out of magical juju at the moment. He threw himself on top of me and I grabbed onto his shirt to try and push him away. He sat up after he straddled me, which I wasn’t expecting. Then I sucked in a big, surprised gasp as he lifted a fist and started bringing it down on me. He punched me in the head. He punched me in the head and face repeatedly while screaming at me.
I’d been hit before, it wasn’t anything really super new to me. I didn’t get into a lot of fights, but I did mouth off to the wrong person once or twice in my life that ended up with me getting beat up. One of those people was my oldest brother, when we were young. I’d push his buttons until he’d haul off and give me a shot in the arm. It made me cry and I’d go whine to mom and it was a thing. The other times were at school and I would get pushed or berated when someone decided they weren’t going to sit there and take my smart-ass comments. This was the first time I’d been assaulted for it. I lifted my hands and tried to keep his fist from coming down at me, but he just broke right through my weak defense. Lifting my head wasn’t a good idea either, because it just bounced back off the ground when he hit me some more.
“Where is she?!” He screamed at me, “Where is Mabel?!”
I just screamed back at him, illegible nonsense. I had half a mind to cast a spell, but I probably would have sent him off the side of the hill if I did, way too high and way too fast. He’d probably hit the road and be dead at the bottom if I blasted him away. It wouldn’t have done me any good anyway. A spell needed concentration, and it was hard to concentrate after about the fourth time his knuckles kissed my forehead.
Still, I’d had about enough of him. I kind of just flexed my abdomen really hard and tightened my jaw and threw myself up at him, sitting up really fast. I bashed my forehead off his chin. That hurt, but it knocked the spit out of him. I grabbed him, punched him in the face as hard as I could, and shoved him. He scrambled off of me. I got up, shaky and off-center, light-headed and messed up. He was wiping blood off his lip. Things had really gone to hell.
“Get… out… of Simon…” I panted for breath and hoarsely tried to order him around.
His response was just to push me. I had my back to the slope of the hill, so when I stumbled my foot found nothing but drop. I careened backward and fell like a brick, hitting my back on the slope and gravity took me from there. I tumbled, somersaulting down the hill, the entire world spinning around from sky to earth and back again. I hit bumps and divots, my little body bounced around. I knocked the air out of my lungs by hitting my back too hard on a spot. I tumbled down a steep hill that was taller than a house. Luckily there weren’t any rocks on it.
The landing at the bottom was soft at least. The grass over the hill was especially long, but thanks to the slope it didn’t grow super tall. The grass at the side of the road though was something you almost needed a machete to cut through. I rolled into it and it caught me like a glove. I was confused. My glasses weren’t broken but they were barely hanging on to my head. I could barely breathe. I hurt everywhere, but especially on my face. I was kind of in shock, really. I just laid there on the bottom, all hunched over on my side, curled up into a pitiful little ball like I’d just been hit by a car or something. I tried to look up, tried to see Simon up there, but I couldn’t lift my head high enough.
I don’t know where he went. He didn’t come down after me. I was laid out there for… well, forever. I’d taken some blows to more than just my body. My energy was going all wonky and I felt cold everywhere. My hands and feet felt numb. Maybe it was just the cool air around me, maybe it was left-overs from the ghost-beating I just took. God, I’d even crushed my balls between my thighs more than once on the way down. I was aching way too much to even think about getting up. Instead I just laid there and tried to think up ways I could have done that better.
I don’t know how long I was down there. I don’t know if I even stayed awake for the whole thing. All I know was that I finally decided to get up when my phone was buzzing in my pocket. Sorely I dug it out. I straightened my glasses and looked at the screen. Percy was calling me. I answered it with a swipe of my thumb and then put the thing up to my ear.
“I just got the shit beat out of me.” I said.
There was a pause, like Percy hadn’t expected to hear that. “… What?” He asked, “Are you okay? What happened to the fairy boy?”
I finally looked up to the top of the hill. I didn’t see him up there. I just realized that the sunset twilight had set in. I must have been out there for an hour, maybe almost two. “Gone,” I said, “He’s gone.” I probably sounded as defeated as I felt.
“Aw man…” Percy exhaled into his receiver, making me wince. My head pounded. “Well, I found out some stuff about exorcisms. I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you about it.”
“Go for it…” I mumbled, rubbing between my eyes.
“Okay, so, according to these books in Dad’s store, it’s a thaumaturgy spell.”
I strained to think. “One of the two main kinds of spells, right? Evocation and thaumaturgy. Ritual spells.” I supplied him with what I knew about them, adding, “Cosmic vending machine.”
“Uh,” Percy followed me, “Okay. Anyway, all you need to do one is a magic circle and some focal points for the magic. The book here shows candles.”
“Like a big crosshair.” I said, “I kinda get it.” I finally picked myself out of the dirt and started the climb back up the hill. It hurt. I was short on breath so I had to pretty much crawl up the slope.
“Right?” Percy said, “And get this, it actually says that you don’t need religious stuff. Like, you know how priests can exorcise stuff? You know, old priest, young priest, pea soup? Well, apparently, and I don’t know if this is true, but all you need is faith. Some kind of… belief or something, in anything, that makes the whole thing work. It doesn’t have to be God or anything!”
That was good, because I didn’t really see eye-to-eye with the whole God thing. What I was beginning to believe, however, was magic. Magic as a force of nature, magic as some balancing force in life. I’d always kind of believed that, while I may not be under the ever-watchful eye of some omnipotent being, there still were things about Earth, life, and the universe that worked. There was order and chaos, good and bad, day and night, light and dark. Everything had two sides to it, every action had a reaction. Magic made me aware of so much more – dreams and reality being the big one. We had Earth and the Nevernever. Two sides, one coin.
“That’s good.” I grunted as I reached the top of the hill, falling onto my gut to rest. Like I suspected, Simon was long gone. “Know any way I can find a missing ghost?”
“Uh…” Percy struggled with the question. “No?”
I sighed.
“Hey, I’m doing my best here!” Percy argued, “You said exorcisms! Do you know how much crap I had to sit through when I asked my dad about ghosts?”
“Oh!” He switched gears, “Speaking of, you ever hear of Ghost Dust?”
“No, what’s that?” I grumbled, packing up my bag.
“Apparently my dad has it mixed into the paint in our house.” Percy supplied. When I was going to yell at him for being useless, he spoke before I could and went on. “Okay so it’s made out of some pretty sick stuff, but apparently it can fight ghosts. They can’t touch the stuff. Hurts their ectogasm or whatever.”
“Ectoplasm,” I corrected, “And what do you mean ‘sick stuff?’”
“Uh…” Percy shuffled through papers on the other end. “Cold iron, basil, heavy dung… depleted uranium?”
I paused as I zipped up my bag. “You do not have a layer of paint in your house made of depleted fucking uranium.” I said, pointedly.
“… I sure hope not.” Percy kind of laughed.
“You know what? I think I’m going to need some of that.” I said to him as I slung my backpack over my shoulders again and gathered up my blanket. With everything in tow, I started back down the hill. My legs wobbled and I fell onto my butt. I turned onto my front and started crawling backwards down the hill.
“Jeez…” Percy breathed, “Well I’ll see what I can do, but man, I don’t think my dad’s store carries depleted uranium, and even if it did I think he’d notice it missing.”
I felt bad for making him do that all of a sudden. I frowned. “Just…”
My voice softened. “Just do whatever you can, it’s okay.”
He paused. “You alright?” He asked.
“No.” I groaned, “But I’m going to have to be. Simon’s out there somewhere, hopefully not impaling himself on a low-hanging tree branch or something.”
“Jeez.” Percy sighed. “Alright. Talk to you later.”
“Seeya.” He hung up before I did, so I shoved the phone into my pocket and carried on down the hill. I reached the bottom and walked in a bit of a haze into the middle of the street, where I then turned on my heels and stepped clumsily back to the gravel at the side. I walked back to my house, in a careful march. I felt like I was dragging myself there. I was still a little shaken after getting beat up. It was a mix between adrenaline and fear. I wanted to cry but at the same time I didn’t. I wanted to go home and crawl into my bed and sleep it off, hopefully forget that anything had ever happened… but at the same time, I didn’t want to rest. I couldn’t, now that Simon was gone.
I stepped onto my patio in front of my house, and I grabbed the cold door knob in my hand and I twisted it. I opened the door and took one step inside. Immediately I felt safer and more at ease being in my own space.
Of course, that feeling vanished when I looked up and saw my mom standing at the top of the stairs in her scrubs, her arms crossed, her glare making her look just a little younger. Young enough that she could kick my ass. I don’t know what face I made when I saw her, but I think it was just open-mouthed gawking or something. She shook her head in a disappointed mom way, slowly. When she finally said something to me, it was in a tone that frightened me a bit more than Simon had.
“You are in so much trouble.”
Chapter 7
You had one job.
That’s what my mom kept saying when she chewed me out for leaving Fraise by herself. She made it explicitly clear that even though she knew I was going through a hard time at school and stuff, I was never excused to do something like that. Man, I wish that I only had one job, that one responsibility. She didn’t know how untrue that statement was. I had a sort-of responsibility to Simon, too, and I messed that up bad. The entire time mom scolded me, I was looking out the window wondering where Simon ran off to. Eventually she saw that as me being disinterested in what she was saying, so she sent me to my room; but not before she took my laptop and my phone away and told me I couldn’t watch TV for a week.
Well, I could get the computer back when I needed to do my homework.
She sent me to my room and I went there more than willingly. There wasn’t much I could do at that point. I’d messed everything up, with Simon and with life in general. I’d tried to think logically through the whole ordeal, but it was starting to wear me down. I went into my room and took off the thick shirt I was wearing to be more comfortable and then I just sat on my bed. Eventually I laid down on my bed and just stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t that I was bored – if anything, I was happy to have the chance to just lay there and look at the stucco on my ceiling.
“Cookie!” My mom called. She could yell loud for a little old lady. I sat up not knowing how long I’d been laying there. I might have almost fallen asleep. I dragged myself out of bed and opened my bedroom door.
“What?” I yelled back across the house.
My mom was coming up the stairs, I could hear her feet. “You have a phone call,” She said, reaching the top of the stairs. I waited for her to get to my bedroom door, because I wasn’t allowed outside it. She gave me a stern look as she passed the phone off to me and said, “No going out.”
“I won’t.” I said. I knew my mom wouldn’t let me close the door on her, so I lifted the phone to my ear while I stood at the door just across from her.
“Hello?” I spoke.
“How goes the date?” Zeroelle asked.
I blinked. I had a lot of questions to ask but my mom was standing right there, so instead I turned slightly away from her and said, “Not good.”
“What happened?” She asked.
“He left.” I said simply. I didn’t want to go into any details with my mom there. “We talked and he just left.”
“Really? That’s it?” Zeroelle seemed confused, but when I told her that wasn’t just it and then didn’t elaborate on what happened, she seemed to piece it all together.
“Oh,” She said, “That’s not good. Well, the good news is that we’ve dragged Sidney here. When can you come meet him?”
I turned slightly and looked at my mom, who was still watching me. “I can’t,” I said, “I’m grounded.”
“Grounded?” Zeroelle repeated. “You’re grounded? Well that’s… this is rather important, you know.”
“I know,” I said, “But I’m grounded.”
Zeroelle sighed. “Damn it all.” She breathed out and was probably rubbing her forehead or something, trying to figure out a way to work around that. “Look,” She said, “Just wait until your mother goes to sleep and then come over to my home. With your friend… gone, this can’t wait.”
I felt a tinge run up the back of my neck at the idea of sneaking out. I’d snuck out before, and it wasn’t hard when both Fraise and mom went to bed at around 9:30 at night. Still, I felt like I was walking on thin ice, and it didn’t help that every time I looked back at my mom she was just watching me. She leaned on the door frame in a flimsy old tank top and some yoga pants and crossed her arms. She was watching everything I did and kept her gaze fixated on me so that I’d comply with her parental wishes. I didn’t want to tempt fate on that. On the other hand, I couldn’t ignore what was going on. I had to know more about ghosts, for Simon’s sake.
“Okay.” I said. I didn’t say anything more, hoping that my neutral tone was enough to convey further compliance to Zeroelle’s plan.
She breathed another, quieter sigh. “Alright then. I’ll see you tonight.”
She hung up and when I took the phone away from my ear, my mom held her hand out. I placed the phone in her open palm and she snatched it away. She asked me if I remembered that I was grounded, and I told her yes. I had to promise her that I wasn’t making any plans or anything. Fortunately, she never asked who I was talking to. Maybe she thought I had more friends or something, or maybe she didn’t recognize Zeroelle’s voice. Alex and my mom did hang out, right? It seemed weird that she might have never met Alex’s wife… er, husband.
Mom had me come down for dinner, eat it, and then go back to my room where I had to wait for night to fall. I kept myself entertained with my books in the meantime – no better time to catch up on reading than when I was forced into living like someone from before the days of the internet.
I had to wait a while for the hour of truth, but eventually I heard my mom and Fraise go to bed. I had to wait just a little while more before I dared to go out; I had to make sure mom was fast asleep before I tried to sneak out. Mice are jittery creatures, and my family’s no real exception. We’ve got good ears, too, so she could have heard me if she were awake. Fortunately, mice are good at sneaking and being quiet as well. When I thought the coast was clear I tip-toed out of my room with my wand and the notebook I’d dedicated entirely to my magical studies. Every spell caster has one, they usually call it a grimoire; but I didn’t think an old binder covered in stickers was fancy enough to earn the name.
The nights were getting colder, so I had to take my duffle coat, the long one with the Black Tartan pattern. I strapped on my boots and escaped into the night, leaving the door unlocked for when I’d get back.
I went to Alex’s house as quickly as I could. Even if my mom wouldn’t wake up, I wasn’t going to dawdle. I arrived a little short on breath, but I was starting to get used to all the walking around. I knocked, Alex answered, and I was invited inside. I had to promise to be quiet, because Alex’s daughter Gwen was sleeping as well. I was taken down into the basement where Zeroelle kept her stash of old things.
That’s where I met Sidney.
I never got a last name out of him, it was just Sidney. The first thing I noticed right away about Sidney from the moment I laid eyes on him was that he was old. He wasn’t just a little aged, the guy was an old badger; literally, he was a badger, and what should have been the dull gray and white tones of his fur were even more paled with his age. Even the dark black lines over his face were faded to a smoky tone to frame his sunken, dark eye weighed down by lines and wrinkles. His other socket appeared to just be empty and squashed.
He wore a hooded robe, black of course, that reached his feet. He had messy gray hair that spilled down around his head, with curly parts at his temples that came down over his chest. A beard he allowed to grow wild and uneven decorated his sunken cheeks and jaw. On his head, he wore a Kippah and around his neck he wore a silver pendant I recognized readily as a Star of David.
A Jewish Necromancer. Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.
I had come down the stairs as the man was having what sounded like an argument with Zeroelle. He had a stereotypical Jewish accent, like the kind you’d hear on a TV sit-com, but it was wheezy with his old age. He stood with a slight hunch making him shorter than Zeroelle, and when he spoke he used a lot of slow, shaking hand gestures.
“You mean to tell me that there isn’t another putz around here who can get off their tuckus and see to this ghost nonsense?” Sidney complained to Zeroelle.
Zeroelle looked tired, and once again sharply dressed, as she always was. Pinstripe pants and a nice jacket. “No, Sidney, you’re the biggest putz we know.” She said through her teeth.
Sidney just grumbled something incomprehensible, possibly in Yiddish. He turned away from Zeroelle when he seemed to finally notice me and Alex at the foot of the stairs. I noted that he didn’t seem to hear us so much as see Alex, which to be fair is a lot easier to do, since Alex is a giant. He seemed to set his gaze on me as an afterthought, blinking at me in confusion. There I stood, in my thick coat and my big boots, with my backpack and my thick glasses and my dyed hair.
“Who’s this?” He asked, looking right past me to Alex.
Alex put her hands on my shoulders and stood behind me. “This, is our little magician.” She said.
Sidney cocked one of his bushy eyebrows right up. “What? Am I hearing you correctly? This little Shiksa is your Seer?” He gestured at me, but still didn’t actually address me personally. “You schlep me here, away from my vacation, a vacation I never get the chance to take, to train some teenage witch? She can’t even have a grasp on the fundamentals yet. How is she supposed to get in touch with the spiritual plane, eh? You can’t program that into those allegedly smart phones, I’ll tell you that!”
“Sidney, I assure you…” Alex started.
“Can she even seal a circle?” Sidney cut her off.
“She’s a fast learner.” Alex answered.
Sidney raised his hands in a silent curse to the heavens, making the sleeves of his robe droop down over his thin arms. “Meschugena!” He lamented, “You haven’t even taught her that simple thing? What kind of a sorceress are you?”
“One that can turn you into a chair if you don’t stop your incessant whining,” Alex cut in, “This little lovely is Cookie.” She looked down at me. “Say hello, dear.”
I raised my hand somewhat timidly and gave him a flexing little wave of my fingers. “Hello.”
Sidney shuffled toward me – legitimate shuffling, he didn’t seem much for walking. He squatted down just a little and he took my hand into both of his and he shook it with enough force to shake my arm around. “Hello! Hello bubeleh, hello!” He put on a tone of mock sincerity and condescension that I didn’t really like. I glared at him. “It’s nice to meet you, but I’m afraid I must be going.”
He stood again and regarded Alex. “I refuse to teach a whelp,” He said, “She could not handle the dark magic.”
“Oh, stow that Necromancy stuff up your wrinkled arse, Sidney,” Zeroelle cut in, impatient and frustrated, “Focus more on the Ectomancy aspect of it. We’re not trying to teach her how to string up someone’s corpse, we just want you to explain to the girl the process of eliminating a shade.”
Sidney turned sharply and pointed at Zeroelle. “You best hope you don’t kick the bucket any time soon, I swear I’ll bring you back to rub my feet!”
“Sidney, darling…” Alex stepped out from behind me. She approached Sidney slowly, on deliberate steps. She stood head and shoulders above him, body moving oh-so-gracefully and swaying with every step. She maneuvered through the antique clutter of the basement without bumping into a thing, her movement fluid from start to finish. She walked right up to the man, and he lifted his chin indignantly, standing up straight and puffing out his chest in wary defiance of the woman.
She then grabbed hold of his robe and lifted him up off the ground, bringing his face closer to hers. He was clearly surprised by the show of brute force, and Alex easily held him off the ground without so much as grunting. “You owe me,” She said, “Might I remind you that I helped keep the Council off your back during a certain experiment?”
“I remember, I remember!” Sidney grumped, “But this is ridiculous! She hasn’t even reached maturity! You can’t expect me to believe that she’s anywhere near the level of a Seer at her age!”
“Try her, you old codger.” Alex put him down again. He brushed himself off, grumbling in Yiddish again.
He eyed me up with a studious glare, which seemed forced because he only had one eye. I didn’t want to know what happened to the other one. He approached me again, standing over me at a fair height. From that close, he had that serious old man smell going on, mixed with deli meat. “Alright, little girl,” He said, “Show me what you can do.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
He sighed heavily. “Show me what you can do!” He waved his hands at me, “Make with the magic!”
“Uh…” I turned to Alex. “I was told not to open Nevernever portals in Alex’s home.”
Sidney laughed bitterly. “Of course! She’s a scared old hag. What else can you do?”
I shrugged me shoulders at him. “Pyromancy and Kinteomancy.” I said.
“Fire and force, eh…” Sidney stroked his bushy, unkempt beard.
“Chalk.” He held his hand out to Zeroelle.
The she-wolf just stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“Chalk.” He repeated.
“You are not ordering me around in my home,” Zeroelle insisted, “Do you want to get even closer to the ethereal? I can arrange it.”
“Chaaaaalk.” Sidney stressed.
Zeroelle snorted as she reached out with her hands ready to wring his neck, but Alex stepped in and stopped her. My mentor gently eased her husband into a walk to send her back upstairs, having her leave before she tore Sidney apart. Alex instead moved to one of the many shelves in the basement, plucked a white piece of chalk, and returned it to Sidney. She shoved it into his hand, enough to make him stumble. Remarkably, he didn’t just teeter over.
“I’ll leave you two to it then,” Alex said, passing me by and messing up my hair as she patted my head, “Good luck, you’ll need it.”
I listened to the creaks of the stairs as Alex left me with that man. I stared at Sidney and he stared back at me. Then he thrust out the chalk in front of my face, practically letting me smell it. “Draw a circle,” He said, “Round as you can.”
I took the chalk from him and stepped back to get some distance between me and his smell. He just watched me as I knelt and pushed the chalk against the concrete floor of the basement. I didn’t even draw a line one centimeter long before he stopped me.
“Oy vey! Bigger! Bigger than that!” He scolded me, annoyingly. How could I draw a circle bigger than not having actually drawn a circle? Most old men were adorable, but Sidney was just frustrating.
I did as he asked and drew a circle big enough on the floor that I could have stood in it. While I did, he muttered to me, telling me to be careful, not to step on the circle to smudge it. If my boot even came remotely close to that line, he got all antsy and started scolding me. I realized then just how lucky I was to have Alex teaching me magic – she was just crazy enough to be lax in her lessons.
I stood up and away from the circle once I was finished. “Okay, now what?”
“Circles are a symbol of power,” Sidney explained, walking around the shape I’d drawn. It wasn’t a perfect circle. I’d learned years ago that there was no such thing as a perfect circle. I did my best not to let my hand jerk or waver, which was hard to do when you had to walk while drawing the shape. “They’ve been what magicians have used since before your time or mine. A circle drawn with the intent of casting a spell has that power, and with a little bit of will, you infuse the circle with your very own energy. That energy creates a focal point for your magic, for rituals or spells, and erects a barrier. No creature of the supernatural will pass through this barrier, though a mortal can mistakenly breach the barrier and dispel its magic.”
Sidney then began to scuff out the circle I’d drawn with his foot, which after his explanation seemed like a total dick move. I breathed in, wanting to yell at him for doing that, but I held it instead.
“That circle was just a circle. Draw another. This time, make your intentions known. This is to be a magic circle.” He instructed be further and stepped back. I stepped forward and, with a sigh, began to do as he asked. I drew a circle, trying to focus my mind on the task of making a magic circle. Intent was a big part of magic, since it’s a force shaped by thought and enforced by will. Exercising my will was kind of like flexing any other muscle on my body, and I’d gotten familiar with it. I could reach out and touch things with it, in a metaphysical sort of way.
I tried that while I drew another white circle on the stone. I failed. Pushing my senses out from my body, I could feel that the circle I’d made had some kind of resonance with my power, but I couldn’t latch on to it as Sidney wanted me to. I felt the magic pop, leaving the air feeling as dull and normal as ever.
“Feh!” Sidney spat his disapproval at me, quite literally. His words were often filled with sharp, phlegmy syllables. “Klutzy mouse. Do it again.”
I did it again. After that, I did it again. I drew circles repeatedly on the ground as minutes went by. Circle after circle, I’d pour all my effort and will into drawing one to get just right, and I was met with disappointment. I was met with scolding from Sidney too, which wasn’t helping my focus any. I guessed I had to learn about circles before I could learn about ghosts for some reason, though I didn’t understand why at the time. I tried asking him what magic circles had to do with it, but he just told me to keep my mouth shut and listen like a good child ought to. The guy was brutally old-fashioned, and just typical enough that I could tell he didn’t trust teenagers like me.
I had very nearly worn down the chalk to its end by the time I finally got it. I think I almost whittled my willpower down to the same level. I had to force my will out, as it was tired. I felt the snap, like I’d just armed a snare. There was a very, very silent hum of magical energy in the air originating from the circle, one I could feel as it connected to me by the invisible threads of magic. That was my circle, there was a little bit of me inside it. I found myself acutely aware of the shape, like I could walk away and still know exactly where I’d left it.
Sidney walked around the circle, rubbing and stroking his beard as he studied it. “Yes, yes, there you are…” He muttered, “Maybe you’re not all khutspe after all. That, girl, is a magic circle. I guess that maven isn’t just filling your head with hormone-riddled nonsense.”
“Well what does it have to do with ghosts?” I asked him again, annoyed.
“Use your head for a moment, what do you think it’s for?” Sidney gestured toward the circle and spoke in slow, simple words to insult my intelligence. “Supernatural creatures cannot pass through the circle. This includes spirits. It’s the first step toward an exorcism.”
I looked at the circle, not having thought of that. “Oh,” I said, “Cool.”
“Cool. She says it’s cool. Oy.” Sidney muttered, then sighed, hobbling his way over to a chair. The creaking when he sat down was just as likely to be his bones as it was possibly the wood.
“There are some simple facts you must know about ghosts, girl,” Sidney began, “First, they’re not people. They never were people. They’re simply memories made manifest, swirling around in the Nevernever with all the other ghoulies and monsters you’ve ever imagined. The more powerful the memory, the more powerful the emotion at the time of one’s passing, the more powerful the person, the more powerful the spirit left behind.”
I squinted at him as I stepped closer to listen. “Wait, what? Well duh they’re not people,” I said, “They’re ghosts.”
Sidney closed his eye and stretched up his eyebrows like I’d just punched him in the face. “No, no, no. The traditional ghost is not what you think it is. They are not souls. A soul is something very different, something very tricky, and most men don’t believe they even exist! Oh, but every mortal creature has a soul, Cupcake, and don’t believe anyone who tells you different!”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. “So, ghosts are… just something separate?”
“A copy, if you want to call it that. Connected to the person they represent, but not them at all.”
“Okay, well… what do you do about them then?” I tried to cut to the chase. I felt like I’d wasted enough time and Sidney was just doing his own thing like the stubborn old bastard he was.
He raised a finger to hush me. “First, you must know that ghosts don’t play by our rules,” He said, “They wander our plane of existence but at the same time they’re not entirely a part of it. A Seer is almost the opposite, now that I think about it. You schmucks wander the Nevernever like lost phantoms as well, though you may not know it. So, with that in mind it should be easy to figure this next bit out: ghosts react to you, like any other supernatural creature. They’re drawn to those with magical power.”
“They are?” I asked him, interested.
He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Oh, certainly,” He said, “Ghosts and phantoms, wraiths and specters, most of them would go entirely unnoticed by muggles. They’ll drift along, doing their own thing, stuck in whatever fuss their origin had been feeling when they passed, and they’d be quite happy to just mosey along, no bother to anyone at all! Throw you into it though and it will prick up.”
I didn’t have any problem accepting that as true when I thought back to my encounter with the possessor ghost at school. The washroom I found it in had always been creepy and people would joke about there being a haunt there, but it wasn’t like anyone ever saw one. Heck, the year before I never saw one. By the time I actually saw it, I had my magical abilities, and I had the power of will. That ghost must have felt me and come running.
And he thought I was someone named Mable. The idea that this was someone very important to them was even more solid now that I knew that ghosts were effected by memories and emotions. Whoever this ghost used to be – or whoever he was pretending to be? They had to have been pretty darn invested in this Mable person, possibly right up until they died.
Sidney was studying me because I’d gone quiet. I didn’t notice at first, but when I met eyes with him, he kind of smirked. It was a very brief expression, and it looked a little strained. “I think you might be getting it into that thick head of yours, Chocolate Chip.”
I shook my head. “Okay, but what if it possesses someone?” I asked, “The ghost I’m dealing with is inside someone else right now. I need to get them out.”
Sidney pointed past me with his saggy, bony finger at the circle I’d drawn. “That,” He said, “You do that. Get them in a circle, trap them there. Use the circle to focus your power, speak the spirit’s true name, and focus your power into drawing it out of the host. The name of the spirit, spoken just right, will hook you to it. Banish it into the Earth, where its spirit will fade away. Or take them to the Nevernever and kill them outright.”
He shrugged at the last suggestion.
“Whoa, wait, I can kill ghosts?” I asked, excited.
“Anything can die,” Sidney nodded, “It makes my business very lucrative.”
“Wow.” I grinned.
“However…”
I frowned.
“A spirit is an impression on the mortal realm from the Nevernever, pressed into the veil,” Sidney explained, “On the Never-side of things, it’s much more powerful than it would be here. It’s best you sever the connection here if you can, and leave it to prattle about in the Nevernever. That usually handles things.”
“But to do that… I need to know its true name?” I asked. I had no idea who this ghost was. How was I supposed to know that?
“Who they were when they were alive.” Sidney shrugged again.
“Shit.” I cursed. I really had no idea how I was supposed to figure that out. It seemed like a tougher job just to figure that out than it would be to actually beat the ghost.
“Don’t you have one of those new-fangled phones? Just look it up, girl!” Sidney huffed, “Back in my day we’d have to go through tomes and books and lists and morgues and graveyards, looking for names and identities, it was all a big fuss.”
“Oh, I… guess I could figure that out.” I said.
“Wonderful, Crueler, wonderful.” Sidney rose to his feet, shaking with a grunt as he did. I could have helped him up, but I was so busy trying to plan out what I’d have to do that I completely ignored him. “I would recommend candles, by the way. Arrange them to what you believe when you make your circle.”
“To what I believe?” I asked, finally turning my attention to my magic circle.
“Mm,” Sidney grunted. “Belief is a fundamental part of magic. Every mage, every wizard, every Necromancer, has something that they believe. Catholic Priests believe there is a one true god, and their faith grants them power. You, too, believe in something.”
I looked back at him, catching sight of his pendant. “I’m not really religious,” I said, “I don’t believe in any of that. Mom tried, never really stuck.” I remembered back to when Percy mentioned religion before and what I’d thought of when he brought it up. “Balance,” I added, “I think that there’s a balance of forces that keep everything together. Light and dark, that sort of thing.”
“Dualism,” Sidney nodded, “A fine belief, and perhaps not uncommon among mages. Then your shape would be a pentacle, not terribly unlike mine, eh?”
He smiled and held up his own pendant for me to see. “Five points, all sides equal, harmonic.”
“Satanic,” I added, “If my mom saw me wearing a pentacle I think she’d send me to bible camp.”
“Ehhh, if she saw you performing exorcisms, I imagine she would do the same thing,” Sidney shrugged his shoulders again, kind of puckering his lips, “Bupkes.”
“Yeah, true.” I chuckled.
I stepped forward and scuffed the chalk circle with my boot, and the magic in it dissipated with a noticeable fizzle. Magic never ceases to impress me, even while I was learning it. It was just some of the coolest stuff, and it felt like it just… supported things I already thought. It made it feel like nothing was impossible and no one belief was wrong. Mom being a Christian and me being a Dualist, neither of us were wrong. Both of us would have some control of things, regardless of our differences. That felt good.
“So, I find out what this guy’s name is, and I can pull him out of Simon?” I asked.
“Mazel Tov.” Sidney said, “Can I go back to my vacation now?”
I turned back to face him and blinked my eyes. “Oh, uh… sure, I guess. Where were you going anyway?” I asked him.
Sidney shuffled past me with a chuckle. “Preparing for Dia de los Muertos!” He told me with a bit of a Mexican flair, or at least as much flourish as he could put into anything. He looked like he was a hundred years old. He carried on to the stairs and stopped at the bottom, clearly preparing himself for the long trip up. “You keep practicing your circles,” He pointed at me, “You’ll need to know them if you don’t want to be chilled to actual death!”
“Or, maybe, stabbed,” He shrugged, stepping up the steps one at a time in a slow, creaking pace, “Beaten, crushed, shot. Anything a mortal can do, really. Buried alive, oh, that’s a bad one.”
He kept muttering all the way up.
I watched him go, stepping along to make sure he got all the way up the stairs and was gone for good. What a frustrating old man. A grumpy guy, but it was difficult to say for sure that he wasn’t nice. He was, in his own way. I don’t think I have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to judging someone’s cynicism. With him gone, I was left alone in the basement under the flickering light of the burning oil lamp. Alexandra and Zeroelle didn’t come down to check on me or anything like that. I was still tired from all the circle-making, and my will was so sapped I was starting to feel a bit of a migraine starting in the pit of my skull. I decided not to go back upstairs right away and instead sat down in the old wooden chair Sidney had been using.
I took my phone out of my pocket and opened the internet. I typed “Newshore High School Deaths” into Google and took the plunge into finding out just who this ghost was.
There were only a few times I had heard about students dying. There was a special needs student, a girl, who just the year before suffered a heart attack and died in her sleep. I remember it being a kind of surreal experience to hear about. I remember seeing the girl a lot of the time, walking about the halls with the rest of the special needs kids in a group. She was always a talkative one, and honestly… she smelled kind of funny. Still, she was someone I had seen so many days out of the year. It was weird that she was just gone. It’s one thing when someone moves away, or if someone you never even knew just disappears and you’d never notice, but knowing that the girl was dead was different.
Then, of course, there was the result that came up right away, and continued down the list of results for three whole pages. Cassandra Bullard, Jessica Hayle, and Kylie Moorse – better known to me as weird dog girl, weird lizard girl, and potato hamster. Three Newshore High students who died by mysterious circumstances following an incident in the woods where they had been practicing witchcraft. Their skinless corpses were found in the woods in Beach City. Of course, I knew exactly what those “mysterious circumstances” had been – I had been directly involved in trying to banish the Boo Hags the girls had summoned. I succeeded, and I’d done a lot of getting over the fact that they died because of something beyond the realm of normal understanding. I even had their three little voodoo dolls in my room, kind of as a reminder.
As much as I didn’t need to be reminded of them, I was more inconvenienced by their cluttering of my search results. I had to narrow things down.
I thought back to what I knew about the ghost based on the things he’d told me and the things I’d observed.
“Hm. Smashers.” I mumbled. I typed in “Smashers High School Football.”
The Smashers, as it turns out, were the football team of a different High School. They had coined the name “Smashers” back in the 1970’s, and they kept that name until a name-change in 1984 saw to it that they were called the Wildebeests based on a change in the school’s mascot. That meant this ghost came from a time before the mid 1980’s, and after the early 1970’s, which definitely narrowed things down. It left somewhere around fourteen years of time, but it was better than nothing.
“When did computers become… no, when did personal computers become available to the public.” I typed in my query into Old Sage Google and after waiting for a decent signal to get into Alex’s basement, was off to the races on that. 1980, if you were wondering, was when home computers started really being marketed toward single non-technical users. They were around as early as 1977, but they didn’t get too much traction until then. That meant that this guy, whoever he was, was a teenager before 1980, because he didn’t seem to have any idea what a computer even was. He was unfamiliar with the technology that everyone these days keeps in their ass pocket.
“Newshore High School Death 1975. Newshore High School Death 1976. Newshore High School Death 1982. Newshore High School Death 1977.”
Ding.
As I said, it’s not often you hear about a student dying. I went years before even thinking it was possible. When it happens, it’s a big deal, even if it was just someone you knew in passing. “Newshore Teen Suicide” was the first headline that appeared on Newshore’s local newspaper’s archive from an article posted in November of 1977. My thumb was practically shaking as I tapped on that link and was brought to what looked like a rough scan of the paper’s page the story was on. It was a bit tough to read – the ink used in the print had either smudged or smeared in some areas. However, the opening line right off the bat under the big, bold headline said it all.
A sixteen-year-old boy was found dead in a Newshore High School bathroom having committed suicide. The boy’s name was Anthony Peter Shultz, a coyote boy not well-known by his peers. A collection of torn and scattered notes found in the washroom where the incident occurred outlined what drove the boy to kill himself, including an abusive home life at the hands of his father and social failings in friendships and relationships. He had somehow snuck a blade to school and used it on himself to take his own life. I looked a little further into it. His father was brought up on charges and further investigation proved that Anthony’s social life at school was lacking. He had no friends and he had tried dating to no real success, despite his desperation.
I don’t know what I expected to feel. I had a name – a clear first, middle, and last name that would get me a ticket to yanking him out of Simon. I had the exact year he died, I had where he died, I had the why and the how. I had spent almost every waking moment of the past few days hating him and what he was doing. I didn’t feel happy though. I didn’t feel excited at solving the mystery. I didn’t even feel satisfied or relieved. I didn’t know what I felt at all until I stopped to really process what I’d learned.
My God, I was like two steps away from being that guy, wasn’t I?
No friends, no romance… I mean, my mom was amazing and she definitely didn’t abuse me, not by a long shot. God, I was so incredibly lucky that she was so great. What if she hadn’t been? What if on top of everything else, my own family didn’t even value or appreciate me in any real capacity? How would I have felt?
I’d seen Anthony, in Simon’s body, try to kill himself before; with the glass behind those apartments. The only thing that made him stop was this Mabel girl. When I lied and said I was her, and because of my aura and the fact that he only really reacted to that, I’d tricked him into believing I was her and he was… happy. All the touching and crap that weirded me out, he was just a happy, stupid boy with a crush on a girl who… I was starting to understand probably didn’t like him back. He kept saying that she was “his girl,” so it was reasonable to suspect at one point that they were going out but… something happened. If I had to guess, it might have had something to do with how Anthony was. Those violent mood swings weren’t just a ghost thing, they were a him thing. They must have broken up.
And he killed himself over it.
As much sympathy as I had for the guy suddenly and as much as it sounded like me, there was a disconnect. I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams how sad you’d have to be to do that. Still, I sat there in the old must and scents of Alex’s basement under the waning lamplight and just thought about it. Everything Anthony did took on a different kind of light when I considered that he was just some happy, stupid kid. Man, it was so sad.
But then, that wasn’t Anthony at all. Anthony was long dead, had been for years. Buried in one of Newshore’s cemeteries and succeeded by no one, in a better place than he had been in life by the sounds of it. That ghost was just a footprint left behind by Anthony’s pain and anguish, and as bad as it was that anyone had to live through that experience, the left-overs were causing problems. Anthony’s ghost was going to hurt Simon, if it didn’t hurt me first. Losing him was a mistake, a big one, and I had to correct it fast or else something bad was going to happen.
But where did he go?
The chair creaked when I got up off it and I ran my ass to the stairs to ascend as quickly as I could. My boots banged up the wood and I threw open the door at the top to step out into the hall to see Sidney at the door with Alex and Zeroelle. He was getting ready to leave… or already was, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was still there.
“Sidney, why do ghosts possess people?” I asked.
Sidney stopped and looked at me. He took a little time to carefully think of what he was going to say as his answer, then came out with it. “Think of possessing a body like sieging a castle,” He said, “Breach the defenses, and invade. Spirits who are aware of the laws of their existence can inhabit a physical form to surpass them, assuming they have the cognitive ability to perceive that they are, in fact, incorporeal and anchored to the place where they died. Many lack this ability, and are unaware of the fact that they are even dead. Even so, an unaware ghost with enough chutzpah can find themselves drawn to a living being of a similar… err…”
“… Temperament.” Alex finished.
Zeroelle shook her head. “The avatar exception, the only loophole that allows spirits to break the rules. Normally they would be tethered to one spot by certain thresholds, like a threshold surrounding a long-time family home. Corporeal beings, muggles, they can pass through these barriers with no problem. Essentially, the ghost can fly the coop.”
“Why?” I repeated.
Sidney shrugged. “Ghosts are memory and emotion driven. The reasons for such an invasive and hostile thing are as numerous as if any human were to do it.”
“If there is at all a sense of purpose in a passed shade, then it will seek to fulfill that purpose,” Alex said, “Even if they’re not fully conscious of any decision to do so.”
Well there was only one thing I knew that drove that guy to do anything, and considering the things he’d done to me, the answer was clear.
“I gotta find this Mabel,” I said, “Before he does.”
Chapter 8
It had been a long weekend of me searching up Mabel.
Finding Anthony’s name was so easy, he was a rare case who had died of particularly exceptional circumstances. Finding Mabel was considerably tougher. I was grounded, so I couldn’t go anywhere to try and use some kind of reference – no public records from the library or things like that. I couldn’t call Percy to make sure we were on the same page or to have him help me. I was left alone in my room all day and all night over Saturday and most of Sunday just web searching. I typed in combination after combination of search terms to try and get something from it all. “Newshore High Mabel,” “Mabel Anthony Suicide,” “Mabel Newshore 1977;” nothing was working. It was just sending me in circles. The image of bold, blue, underlined web article headlines on a blank white background had burned their way into my retinas so that I saw them when I closed my eyes at night.
I didn’t play any games, read any books, or even watch too many videos on YouTube. The entire weekend was sunk just trying to answer the question: who is Mabel?
After about fifty bajillion searches, I sat back in my chair and spun around in circles, laptop in my lap. “Okay,” I said, “Let’s just assume he’s as old as me. Sixteen. When he died, in 1977, he was sixteen. So that means he was either in the tenth or eleventh grade. Let’s assume he was in the tenth. He would have graduated…”
I counted in my head, just to be sure. Math isn’t my strongest subject and I was at my wit’s end, brain-fried.
“Newshore Graduating Class of 1979.”
I typed it in and hit enter and rubbed my eyes when the search results came up. Of course, there wasn’t anything simple, like a yearbook online for me to look at. Computers weren’t even widely available back then and schools weren’t the kind of places to keep yearbooks in an archive like newspapers were. Maybe there were some exceptions, but everything I was seeing on the screen was in relation to Newshore High itself and the yearbook of the present or the past few years, but nothing specifically relating to the class of 1979. I groaned and let my head hang back on the back of my chair, my arms drooping off the sides. What was it gonna take to find this girl?
I yawned. Sunday was as good as over and I wasn’t any closer to figuring things out. I looked at the screen again and scrolled through some of the more useless crap. I stopped, though, when I saw something that at least stood out among all the junk. “Get in touch with old classmates,” the page declared. In the short blurb beneath the link, Newshore High School was bolded, and prior to it was a paraphrased part of the description that seemed to be going by year. 1979 was bolded as well. I clicked it figuring I had nothing to lose by checking it out. I could only really go up from the rock bottom I was at.
The site looked old, like it was put together in a super cheap template designer with old clip arts and tacky comic sans and times new roman fonts. It began with a surprisingly huge list of years, all clickable links, going from as far back as the late 1960’s. Under that big block of links was a line divider that seemed to separate every section, and every one of those sections contained a list of names… registered users, if I had to guess. I scrolled back to the top and picked 1979 and was brought to the subsection on the same page instantly. The lists seemed to just get bigger and bigger the further you went down. The graduating class of 1979 only had thirteen names listed, which was definitely not the entire roster for sure, but I had to take what I could get.
Naturally I looked straight for the M’s. Everything was in alphabetical order.
And there she was, right at the top. Mabel Turnsbrook.
Now, I had no way of knowing for sure if Mabel Turnsbrook was the Mabel, so I kept a healthy amount of skepticism in my head as I proceeded. Being skeptical is one of a magician’s greatest tools. I checked the time – 10:43 PM – and decided that since mom was in bed I was safe to move around the house as I pleased… but really, by then, I was allowed out of my room for whatever I wanted anyway, I just wasn’t going outside any time soon. I crept out into the hall anyway, being as sneaky as could be to avoid waking either my mom or my sister. I went downstairs and into the kitchen where I knew in one of the drawers my mom kept an old phone book. It was way more reliable than the online white pages, so I went rooting for it, finding it stuffed into what was also being used as a junk drawer. It was hard to open quietly, as something got stuck and banged around when I forced the thing.
I grabbed the book and took it back to my room. Man, those things are heavy. That’s what I wanted my grimoire to be, just absolutely loaded with paper so thick you could bludgeon someone to death with it. This was because it wasn’t just a Beach City phone book. It had all the registered numbers of every resident in every one of the four surrounding towns as well, plus some yellow pages in the back for services and businesses. I’m not usually the kind of person to talk big about anything old-fashioned, but I dare you to find anything more useful than that without having to type fifty million things into Google to get what you want.
I dropped the book on my bed and flopped on after it, cracking the massive thing open to look through the pages. First, I figured, I’d look at the obvious place. Mabel might have lived in Newshore, so I thumbed through until I got to that index, then I went for the M directory, praying to whatever powers were guiding me that Mabel never married anyone in her lifetime. I’d never find that surname if she took someone else’s. That would have been impossible.
Again, there she was, right near the top. There were a couple of other Mabels there, but only one Turnsbrook. The name was listed right next to her address, 55 Lovell Avenue. Of course, there was her phone number too. I looked at the time again – 10:56 PM – and even though it was late, I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed it. I listened to the thing ring a few times and then click.
“Hello--”
“Hello, Ms. Turnsbrook? You don’t know me, but I--”
“You’ve reached the residence of Mabel Turnsbrook, I’m sorry but I am away from my phone at the moment and am unable to answer your call…”
Ah, the answering machine. Of course. Cookie, you idiot, this woman graduated thirty-seven years ago. She’s probably over a half century old. Of course she’d be in bed.
I just hung up. No sense leaving a message, I’d sound like a crazy person if I tried to warn her about Anthony.
Anthony, who had possessed Simon’s body, and had been missing then for two days.
So now I had to think. Another great tool for magic practitioners – and this one is incredibly important and very prevalent – is preparation. I didn’t know this at the time quite so much, but magicians, wizards, Seers, sorcerers, witches, warlocks, druids, witchdoctors, necromancers, or whatever else you can come up with, all benefit A LOT by being prepared for situations. They’re supposed to be outside-the-box thinkers, ones that can walk into anything and have some magical doodad answer for anything that might pop up. That makes time a pretty valuable asset to a spellcaster. The more time they have to prepare, the higher the odds of them not dying a horrible death. I’d never done a lot of preparing at that point, and I wasn’t even overly aware of enough things to know what to do when I got there.
The first thing was to commit this guy’s full name to memory. Anthony Peter Shultz. I had to say it, over and over, with different inflections and tones, because if you don’t say a name just right, it won’t work as well. I had to make sure I both said it the way it was said by him while he was alive, and with enough command of my willpower to force a connection with him. Fortunately, and again I didn’t know this at the time, but the thing with names was that they could… fall out of style, so to speak. A name is a very important and very personal thing connected to a being. Two people could have the same name, but both are spoken differently. The thing about that was that they were very flexible. My name is Cookie Pâte Souris, and the way I say it now might not be the way I said it back then. Names change just like the people who own them. So, what about someone who isn’t alive anymore? Well, their name gets stale.
It becomes a lot easier to use that name to generate a specific effect, the tone and inflection of every syllable doesn’t have to be a precise as if they were still up and around and using it. The only drawback is that the name’s connection to its owner might not be as strong as it was either. I’d have to thread my will through myself a fair bit before it latched on to something, whereas a living person’s common name might connect more readily, as it’s more presently identifiable to its owner. Also, this was a ghost. It wasn’t the actual living person at all, just a connection to them; a concept. The rules of engagement were a little wonky.
The second thing I needed was the circle. If I wanted to yank Anthony out of Simon, I’d need to make a circle and trap him in it. A little easier said than done considering Anthony granted Simon’s body some supernatural strength. He wouldn’t have had a very hard time snapping me like a twig if he put his mind to it. I needed to be able to draw one quickly and reliably. I’d been practicing them as much as I could over the past couple of days and I essentially could nail three out of five, which wasn’t the most ideal score but I figured I could force it. I went and gathered things from downstairs to serve as the scrawling tools, and after rooting around for a while I found the only things I thought would work. I took an entire bag of salt from the pantry, a plastic funnel, and a large package of birthday candles that my mom thankfully kept buying in bulk because we have so many people in our family and she makes a big deal out of birthdays. When I wanted to light those suckers, well, I had the Chandelle spell down. My crowning achievement as a spellcaster: I could fill in for a lighter any time.
Other factors to take into consideration included getting to Mabel’s house, getting in Mabel’s house, and making sure Simon stayed in the magic circle long enough for me to get Anthony out of him. Finding Mabel’s house would be easy enough; I could get Percy to help with that using his phone. Getting in… well, hopefully the door was unlocked, but just in case it wasn’t, I knew a good Percuter would get me in no problem at the risk of severe property damage. The last bit… was considerably more difficult. I didn’t have the physical fortitude I’d need to hold Simon in place and even if I did, I needed all the concentration I could get to perform the exorcism. As I packed my glove and baton away in my bag with the materials for the magic circle, I stopped to think about it.
Again, the only person I could think to ask for help was Percy. That was dangerous. He could have really gotten hurt tangling with a spirit possessed mortal, especially considering Anthony’s tendency for violence. If my theory was correct, and Anthony wanted to enact some kind of revenge on Mabel for breaking his heart, then he wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way, not even a monkey. I was a dick to Percy before, but I was going to make up for it by not tossing him in harm’s way. I’d just have to figure something out, maybe tangle with Simon to knock him out or something. He didn’t need to be conscious for the exorcism, just present. The baton would have to do well enough, assuming he didn’t just throw me out of a window.
Sacrifices, Cookie. Sacrifices. I just had to believe I’d be fine. If magic is based on belief, then if I believe hard enough it’ll come true, right? That’s not at all how it works but I jokingly considered the possibility of gaining what was essentially plot armor by way of make-belief. Like when you’re a kid playing guns and you tell your sister that she “didn’t get you because you dodged.” I think magic knows the difference between honest belief and lying through your teeth though.
With everything put together, it was once again time to try to go to sleep knowing that the very next day I’d be neck deep in some kind of supernatural disaster.
… I woke up the next morning raring to go. I don’t know what had me so energetic, but I practically leapt out of bed and got ready for school in a flash. Before I left, I noticed that mom had left my phone on the kitchen table with a note explaining that I could use it during school, just in case of emergencies. I took it and left for the bus with a belly full of oatmeal and my hair still slightly damp from my shower.
I texted Percy to let him know the deal, so when I got off the bus he met me there. We didn’t even bother to go into the school, instead we immediately left together off the property and headed straight for Mabel Turnsbrook’s house, which I had brought up on the map app to get directions.
It was a nice day, and something about it made me feel at ease. It was sunny for it being pretty much autumn, warm but not too warm. I could have skipped classes to go to the Dairy Queen down the street and just enjoyed some ice cream and sitting around on my phone and I would have been perfectly content with that. It was easy when I was getting into the thick of things to think about a hundred other things I would have rather been doing. Even math class with Mr. Monroe sounded more enjoyable than this.
“So, here.” Percy said as we left, handing me a drawstring pouch with something in it.
I looked at the seemingly innocuous bag curiously. “What’s that?” I asked, not willing to write off anything Percy or his dad gave me at face value ever again, not after a pentacle I thought was a fake ended up saving my face from a hag claw make-over. Percy didn’t really bat an eye at my skeptical nature.
“Ghost dust, man!” He explained, “I ground it all up on Saturday after my dad closed shop. This is the stuff that’s supposed to hit ghosties where it hurts, according to the books.”
I took the bag, furrowing my brow. “What book did you even look at to get that recipe?”
“Ectoplasm and You: A Guide to Comfortable Co-Existence with The Incorporeal,” He said, “This was one of those… ‘just in case your ghost is a dick’ things.”
“Yeah, this one’s a real dick,” I said, shaking the bag a little. There was something in there, something weighted, but not too heavy. I opened it up and looked inside to see… well, powder. It was a brownish gray, nothing spectacular. It really did look like someone had just ground up rocks and actual shit. I pocketed the stuff for later. “But at the same time… it’s kind of not his fault? Dude killed himself in the bathroom I found his ghost in way back in the day because… honestly? His life sucked.”
“Like, how bad?” Percy asked, stopping at a crossroad to push the button to get us across. He turned to me as we stopped and waited.
I looked right up at him and answered, “Like, my dad beats me and nobody likes me bad.”
I think his face went to something between sadness and disgust. “Ah, jeez,” He said, “That’s rough.”
“Yeah, well, this guy’s gonna put people in danger,” I said, “And besides, it’s not really him anyway. Ghosts are just memories left behind by… really… sad people. Or angry or whatever.”
“Oh,” He scrunched his thick eyebrows, “Hey uh, if I ever get that sad, just uh… y’know kill me early or something, would ya?”
I kind of laughed. “Um, okay. Deal.” We carried on through the town, having to walk several blocks away from the school, practically venturing what I thought to be around half way through Newshore’s downtown, then we had to turn off into the side roads. Lots of houses down that way, and trees. The houses were pretty distinctly different depending on what block you were at. You could tell the town had gone through numerous renovation projects every year. Some homes looked brand new and some of them looked like they’d been there for ages. Some were huge and some were absolutely tiny. There was a bricked three-story home that had to have no less than three bathrooms next to a little slat paneled discount home with plastic children’s toys strewn about the yard. If there were anything resembling neighbourhoods at some point, they must have all got mashed together into one.
“You see Simon at all?” Percy asked me as we walked. He had to walk a bit slower so my little legs could keep up to his lanky pair.
“No.” I answered uneasily. I hadn’t even seen him on the bus and that was bad news. Every time I realized he was still missing, I felt a growing sense of dread. Anthony wouldn’t just go away like that, he had to have gone somewhere… somewhere connected to him. If he didn’t make his way back to the school, I didn’t think he could have gone anywhere but Mabel’s. Could he just find her like that? I wasn’t sure, but I had the sense that eventually he would. The least I could do was find Mabel and talk to her, warn her about what was going to happen. Whether she believed me or not, it’d give her a chance when Simon came to her door.
“Hey, uh,” I stopped, making Percy stop too. I faced him and said, “Look, I don’t want to end up like this guy one day, so… I’m sorry. For telling you to get lost and stuff. I just… well you weren’t really gonna stop Evangeline and I was pretty upset and…”
Percy raised his hands. “No, hey, that’s my bad!” He said, “I just didn’t wanna mess up my chances, y’know? With Eva. I think she likes me.”
I just kind of stared at him in disbelief.
“But,” He added, nervously rubbing the back of his neck and grinning like a tool, “I mean, she does seem like a real jerk.”
“So, we’re friends, right?” I asked him.
Percy blinked. “Sure, I mean… if you want? I was pretty sure we were.”
“No; I mean, yeah, I guess, I just didn’t…” I felt embarrassed, so I just carried on, “Well… good.”
Percy laughed at me. “Good!” He repeated, “Good-good.”
“Good-good-good.” I grinned, shaking my head.
I looked back down at my phone. The directions on the app said that Mabel’s street was just one more block away. “We’re almost there,” I said, “So… what’re we gonna do when we get there?”
“Why’re you asking me?” Percy said, “You’re the magic lady.”
Right, he had a point. “Okay, uh,” I started, “I have a theory that Anthony’s going to go gunning for this Mabel chick and try and kill her. Assuming he hasn’t yet, we warn her. We keep an eye out for Simon and make sure he gets nowhere near the place, and when we do find him, we do… something to keep him still long enough to exorcise the ghost.”
“Cookie, as your newest and most recent friend, I have to tell you,” Percy said, “That plan sucks.”
I glared at him. “Yeah well, do you wanna try doing this? Or at we gonna do things my way?”
“Your way!” Percy surrendered.
We found Mabel Turnsbrook’s house nestled along a nice little suburban street, betwixt other houses like it. It was a simple-looking place, conjoined with its neighbour, 57, and based on the rather flat-looking, single story design with basement windows, I figured it only had a main floor and one underground level. The driveway, which was shared with its other neighbour, 53, had a crack running through the pavement where grass had started to grow out of it. There was no car or vehicle to be seen, but a ramp affixed to the side-door main entrance suggested that, maybe, Mabel Turnsbrook owned one of those automated scooters for the elderly. The outside of the house was a combination of pale blue slatted siding and red brick corners with a solid, dark green foundation. It had a brown roof with a white border that provided a two-foot overhead on every side.
The place was ugly as hell.
Percy and I stood at the end of the driveway just looking at it. He in his skinny black jeans and zip-up blue jacket with the diagonal zipper, me in my platform boots, nylon leggings, a denim skirt and my double-breasted duffle coat. Autumn was basically already there. The trees around were changing colours to golds and reds and the cool breeze picked some off the branches to blow them around. They were scattered over Mabel’s lawn, unraked.
“I wish I still had my cape.” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Percy responded, “That’s the first thing I think about when I’m going to fight ghosts too.”
I turned my head slowly to stare unimpressed at his stupid face, and he just smiled at me.
“Need me to knock on the door?” He asked.
I grimaced a smile at him. “Pretty sure I can handle that, thanks.” Then I trudged on up the driveway and to the door. I opened the old screen door and held it open with my arm, shouldering my backpack as I awkwardly twisted to knock. I banged on the door a few times and waited. I waited, and I waited. I looked through the screen door at Percy, who just shrugged at me. I waited a little longer, and then I knocked again. I waited, and waited. No answer.
I wondered if I had the right place. I checked the house number – 55 – and I knew I was on the right street. Everything checked out. The phone book was a little old… maybe Mabel moved and nobody lived there?
Percy stepped up and reached over me to bang his fist on the door. “Hey, Ms. Mabel?! You there?!” He shouted. Fortunately, there was no car in the neighbour’s driveway, so odds are they weren’t around to hear him screaming for some old lady. We waited a little while longer, maybe half a minute, and there just wasn’t anyone coming to that door. Disappointment filled me up.
“Shit.” I grumbled in frustration.
“Well,” Percy shrugged, “That was a… good try, I guess?”
I tried not to get too upset in my disappointment and just stepped away to let the screen door close. “Man, being a Seer is hard.”
Hanging our heads in defeat, we left, walking down the driveway.
I only got a few paces from the door before I heard a woman scream. “AAIIIEEE!” The shriek came from inside the house.
Percy and I flinched and stopped, looking at each other before turning and running back to the door. “Oh shit!” Percy said.
I threw the screen door open and held it out. “Grab this,” I said, digging around in my pocket as Percy held the door open. I plucked my collapsed baton out and drew it from my pocket to take it in my hand and flick it out, roughly extending the Crucible steel rod so that all the segments locked into place.
“What’re you gonna do?” Percy asked.
I stepped back and held out the baton, pointing the tip of the telescopic wand at the door. I answered, “Ringing the bell.”
If will energy was like gathering up mud, I was scooping up metaphysical handfuls of the stuff and just slapping it on. The air around me tingled, the fur on the back of my neck stood up, and I bundled it all up into a force to be reckoned with. Then, I said the magic word… and it wasn’t “please.”
“Percuter!!”
The words left my lips and the energy left my wand, blasting my hair back, blasting my coat back, and slamming into the door like an angry bull. I took the thing right off its hinges, shredding the wood the old brass was affixed to and sending the whole door inward. It crashed into the stairs right in front of the door, and I heard the woman scream again, louder this time as the door was now open. I ran up the front ramp and into the house, charging up the stairs using the broken-in door as a platform, rushing straight into Mabel Turnsbrook’s living room.
It was such a sweet old lady’s home. She had shelves of porcelain dolls on display and crochet stitched crafts on the walls that had delightful floral patterns and said things like “home is where the heart is.” The wallpaper had a gentle floral border and the carpet was blue. The place smelled like potpourri and the dining table I could see had little doilies on it. It was a beautiful, relaxing, modest little home on the inside, very clean, but there were signs of a struggle. Broken china shards were on the floor and things like books and photo frames were thrown around the living room, which consisted of a sofa, recliner, coffee table, a couple of standing lamps, and TV unit.
And there was Simon. He was looming over an elderly canine woman in an old t-shirt and some pants that looked like she should be sleeping in them and not wearing them out and about. She wore slippers and had glasses, and her brown fur was dull and her curly hair was silver gray. Her expression was wide-eyed, gawking terror as she held her arms up trying to defend herself from the kitchen knife Simon was trying to stab her with. He’d already cut her hand once, as she was bleeding quite a bit over her own saggy chest. She had tears just streaming down her face and she screamed, not for help or for him to go away… she just screamed.
Simon looked like he hadn’t slept in days and had walked the entire way from Beach City to Newshore. His clashing clothes were a little torn and very dirty, with dirt and sand stained into his white t-shirt and pants. His hair had a twig in it and his lip was still split from where I had headbutted him. His eyes were wild, but blank. Whatever his face was doing, I couldn’t describe it to you. It wasn’t human. People didn’t look like that. When I came in, he immediately looked right at me, setting those wild eyes on me.
“Ding-dong, Anthony!” I shouted. I just acted after that. I dropped my bag and ran into the room, and as soon as I took a step Simon lifted the knife to plunge it down into who I assumed was Ms. Turnsbrook. I ran, stepped up onto the coffee table, then jumped. I spun so my back was to Simon and threw myself at him, my arms outstretched and my wand pointed out. “Percuter!” I shouted, the force of the sudden spell whipping me back-first across the room and into Simon’s body, crashing into him and taking him down to the floor with me. We hit a shelf next to the window and something shattered before we fell to the floor. Ms. Turnsbrook just kept screaming, and I just tried to ignore her as Simon immediately started wrestling with me.
I must have made him drop the knife, considering I wasn’t just killed right then. Simon climbed on top of my back, so I threw my head back to smash my skull off his chin. When he recoiled, I got my knees under me to shove my ass up and throw him off. I whipped around and pointed my wand at him, stopping only when I realized that Ms. Turnsbrook was still in the chair freaking out behind Simon. I couldn’t just blast him while she was there, so I had to think of something else. I didn’t think fast enough, and Simon was on me again. He grabbed my throat, angrily choking me out as he stood up. Simon was a lot of things, but he was never strong enough to lift my entire body up off the ground by my neck and hold me at arm’s length. That was super ghost strength at work, and it really sucked.
I grabbed on to his arm for leverage and planted one of my boots on his chest. The other, I slammed into his nose. I don’t care how small I am and how strong you are, my platforms are gonna hurt you, and they must of. Simon cried out in anger, lifting me higher before just throwing me back across the room. I hit my back off the wooden entertainment unit that house Ms. Turnsbrook’s TV and sound system, as well as numerous pictures and snow globes I knocked off the top of it before I collapsed onto the floor. I kept my wand close, not daring to let it go, trying to pick myself back up off the floor. That would’ve been great, except Simon had come over and was in the process of tipping the whole unit down and crushing me under it.
He tilted it and the TV – an old, blocky sort of thing – slid out first, pulling out from the wall and falling toward me. I kicked my feet up and planted them on the glass screen, holding it up so that it didn’t fall on me.
“Fuck off!” Percy yelled at him, grabbing Simon by the scruff of his shirt and pulling him away before he could toss the rest down on top of me. It was a classic sportsman’s fight – grab the jersey and feed him hammers. Percy seemed darn familiar with it, keeping the collar of Simon’s shirt bunched up and held tight so his arms didn’t have much room to move. He kept him at arms’ length, which was good for Percy because he had longer arms, and he started socking Simon in the face indiscriminately. I shoved the TV off myself, my legs and back feeling sore after my beating, but I was up on my feet before too long.
“H’oh boy!” Percy yelled when Simon just grabbed him by his shirt and brute forced his way in close. He picked Percy up off the ground and ran with him until he slammed him up against the wall past the entryway stairs. Percy looked shocked to be lifted and handled so easily by someone he had several inches of height on, and looked as if his wrist might break if he threw a punch. Simon continued holding Percy up against the wall and Percy kept trying to fight him off, but throwing punches at his head wasn’t working. He looked around and grabbed at the first thing he could find – a vase on a shelf – and smashed it over Simon’s head. The thing broke into pieces on impact and stunned Simon.
Percy grabbed Simon, throwing his arms around him and squeezing his arms together to keep the guy restrained. The last thing he did was reach back, grab the back of Simon’s shirt, and pull it up over his head, hooking it down under Simon’s chin.
“Cookie!” Percy yelled at me. He held Simon’s shirt so he couldn’t break free or use his arms, and Simon just started to whip his body around like an angry rhinoceros, tossing Percy around with him. “Do something already!”
“Hold him still!” I told Percy, who was struggling to do just that, trying to plant his feet and use physical leverage against supernatural strength. It didn’t work. Simon continued to push and swing Percy’s body across the room blindly. All Percy could do was pull and tug. Eventually he hooked his leg around Simon’s and shoved his whole body into taking the guy down. They fell onto the floor together, where Percy did his best to keep Simon pinned. That left me to do my thing.
I had to hurry, so I didn’t waste any time. I completely screwed up Mabel’s dining room, throwing all the chairs around and shoving the table against the wall so hard I put a hole in the drywall with it. With all the room I could get, I went to my bag and gathered my things. I put on my Grimfang glove and took my salt and the funnel and the birthday candles and got to work. I shoved the candles into my pocket and used the funnel with the salt to start tracing a circle on the floor around Percy and Simon. I stopped to pile some up in roughly equal positioned around the shape and stuck one candle in the mound before I’d continue.
“Cookie hurry the hell up!” Percy yelled at me. I checked on him. His face was red and veins were bulging out of his forehead as he struggled with Simon, trying to just shove his chest down on Simon’s head to keep his nose buried in the carpet. Simon kicked his feet, Percy kicked his, putting my circle in danger. I tried to make it wide enough so that it was safe, but the two of them were so erratic I didn’t know how long I could make sure things were in order.
I made the circle, then did a second lap around with a flame on my finger, dipping down to light all the candles one by one. I spaced them out as evenly as I could in the five points around the circle. Once they were all lit, I placed my hand on the floor and bundled up my desperation to feed it in. It funneled into the circle like a pipe snake and made a circuit, humming to life and creating a magical enclosure. I let out a breath I’d been holding and panted for more air as I stepped back. Now I had to do the actual exorcism.
I held out my wand toward the circle and shouted the ghost’s name. “Anthony Peter Shultz!” I packed every syllable with a will-powered sucker punch, and I hit. Think of getting a thigh-high sock and stuffing a bundle of rocks in the end, then swinging it down from over your head and slugging a guy with it. That’s what I did, and it snagged onto the spirit and pulled taut. My body lurched forward as the threads that connected us found immediate resistance. Simon started going bat-shit crazy in the circle, scratching and clawing at Percy’s arms and managing to heave the guy up on his back as he tried to get up.
“Anthony Peter Shultz, you will listen to my commands!” I shouted, “You tortured spirit! Release the Simon Oliver! You’re not welcome here!” I had no idea what I was saying, just throwing out orders. “Anthony Peter Shultz, you will return to the afterlife from where you came and bother us no longer! GET. THE FUCK. OUT.”
A wind whipped up in the circle, a vortex of air that skirted the barrier, trapping Simon and Percy inside. Simon rose to his feet and Percy continued to try and keep him restrained, rising to his feet as well to fight. Simon freed himself, screaming in absolute agony that left me a little shaken. His eyes blazed red and he seemed to glow with an odd, ethereal energy. The vortex closed in on him, the wind funnel sucking right into his mouth and if I had to guess, deep down into his soul. I supercharged the spell with another bitch-slap of will, pushing more power, taking more from myself to reach down Simon’s throat and tear that ghost out of him. It was rough, and it was brutal. I latched on, dug in, and I pulled.
Anthony’s spirit was sucked out of Simon’s face and into the vortex, trapped in the whipping air, crying out in pain. I had him right where I wanted him, and the funnel lowered to the floor, latching there and drawing Anthony down into it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t account for Simon. His then unconscious body fell out of the circle, scattering salt over the carpet.
The entire spell went tits-up and dispersed in a violent gust of energy that sent whatever the hell was left on Mabel’s shelves flying off onto the floor. I was hit with a very sudden magical backlash as I lost control of the power and took some of it back into me. It hit me right in the chakra. Like being clubbed in the head, I just collapsed right onto the floor. In that very instant, everything was fucked up. Percy tried to catch Simon and failed, and now Anthony was hovering in the air, grayscale, translucent, and pissed the hell off.
I sat up, holding my head and trying to stop the ringing in my ears. I watched as Anthony gave me a hateful stare down, then turned his attention on poor Mabel Turnsbrook, who looked… well, as if she’d seen a ghost. She was pale and speechless and horrified, and as she gawked at Anthony, he hovered toward her, arms outstretched. I couldn’t find my marbles fast enough to stop him from reaching her and touching her, his hand phasing through her throat, and I knew that meant it probably just froze shut.
“Oh, you wanna play that way, huh?” I muttered and stood up.
Let’s see how he liked being bad-touched.
I took the bag of ghost dust out of my pocket and dumped a handful out into my other hand. The dust ran through my fingers, but I clutched what I could as hard as I could. I marched right over to Anthony and he looked at me just in time for me to whip the stuff right into his face.
“POCKET SAND!” I shouted as the dust flew into his face. The result was amazing. Once again, Percy pulled through as the stuff was legit, and the second it contacted his body, it erupted into blue ethereal flame. He wailed. He screamed so loud his echoing voice cracked, reaching a pitch I didn’t think boys could even reach. He jerked away from Mabel, from me, and he clawed at his face, flailing in frantic desperation to put himself out. The flames burned him, melted him away, chunks of ectoplasmic goop slopping off him and onto the floor, just plopping off in handfuls of the stuff. I was bewildered, I stared as that ghost suffered, legitimately suffered pain unimaginable. It was so amazing I almost forgot to follow it up.
“Alright shitlord,” I said, raising my gloved hand and holding my fist up, “Say goodnight.”
“Saisir…” I reached out and twisted my hand out, tangling the veil around my fingers, able to feel it delicately trying to weave through and around me. I grabbed it, roughly, violently, snapping my hand shut and holding onto the bent fabric, ripples twisting into reality around my fingers. It wriggled in my fingers, energies disrupted by my grasping fist.
“Fissurer…” I dug my fingers in as tight as they would go, as if I were trying to tear open the flesh of an animal. I pulled, raking my fingers through a matter not unlike organic skin. It peeled around my effort, my arm shook with the exertion. My hand passed through, and I grabbed the lip of the veil and I held it tightly in my fist.
“Démolir. Déverrouiller la porte!!”
Then I pulled open a door. Yanking my hand back in a flash of brilliant energy, the pinkish portal to the Nevernever was forcefully broken down, leaving a tear right there in the living room where I stood. The air around me whipped around in all directions, shards of porcelain and broken, shattered snow globes picking up and flying around the room. The portal enveloped me, the energies surrounding my body keeping that hole pried open as it desperately tried to close in on itself, the void wailing like a baby in the pain I’d put it through.
My hands blazed with hot, glowing, pink runic symbols. I knew the etchings surrounded me, every inch of my body an intricate pattern of carved symbols whose meaning had been lost to time. My Third Eye was more than open, locked on to Anthony like a crosshair. The boy shook and shivered. He cried. He was frightened and sad, and alone and unloved. My heart bled for him. I cried. There was so much hate in there though, so much resentment that the boy barely resembled a boy at all. He was something else, twisted and disfigured, torn apart by the horrible life he led that had ultimately brought him to his taking his own life.
That was Anthony in his last moments, and it was time he got the rest he so desperately needed.
“Encercler.” I spoke the words into the between-space, the void where my powers seemed infinite. Anthony looked at me, he looked right into me and he knew. He stared at me in wonder and sadness.
“Piéger.” Blazing light shot forth from the portal, manifesting into pink, blazing chains with blades at their tips. They didn’t impale the boy, or even latch on. I took him, held him, the chains wrapping around his body gently, then constricting. He was trapped, but not alarmed. He stared at me and I stared back at him. He understood.
“Renvoyer!" The chains snapped tight and pulled him in.
There was a moment where he passed me in the between-space. He wasn’t crying anymore.
He erupted into brilliant colours. He became thought, feeling, and life. Dazzling, like a shoreline of gemstones on a sunset beach. Beautiful, like a baby’s first giggle. The release was welcome and I felt a weight ease off my heart as his spirit was dispersed back into the ether.
What a beautiful place. Ms. Turnsbrook’s house was a place of love and memory, joy and sadness interwoven into a single beautiful orchestra that played silently in the breeze. A garden, lovingly tended to throughout a lifetime, thoughtfully weeded and pruned and gently touched on to create a wondrous place of serenity and comfort. It was a full, complete place, its sole inhabitant simply waiting, peacefully for it all to pass on. It felt just a little brighter, the sun burned just a little warmer. It smelled a little nicer. Something in that place had been corrected.
On the other side, a home, in the waking world, devastated by a ghost. I hesitantly turned and stumbled out into that side, but deep down I wanted to stay in the beautiful garden in the Nevernever. Such a beautiful place, far better than anything in the real world. I couldn’t though, not yet. I had things to do still.
I stumbled out, drunkenly swaying. “A... Arrêtez,” I chanted, the portal closing, disappearing into thin air, dispersing the wild energies in the air and letting them fizzle out. I stepped back, back, and back some more, staring at the ceiling. I tripped over Simon’s body and fell onto my back on the carpet, where my eyes closed and the last thing I heard was Percy yelling at me.
He wanted to know if I was okay. I wasn’t responding to him. Didn’t he see I was passing out? What a spaz.
It was quiet for a while.
When I woke up, I was seated on the couch next to Simon, who was still unconscious. I groaned, my head throbbing in pain like it was splitting down the middle. Hearing my sissy sounds of being in pain, Percy jumped up from the recliner and came to my side. He just watched me, shaking my shoulder a bit to keep my fuzzy senses.
“Mmf… y’know… if I’m gonna pass out every time…?” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes, “I just dunno… if this is worth the effort.”
“Wow,” He said, “Just wow. I am never gonna get used to that. Holy shit. Is that it? Is he gone?”
I leaned back on the couch and smiled. “Yeah,” I said, “He’s gone.”
“Heck yeah, super hero!” Percy smacked my arm, which jolted me awake again. Probably deliberate.
“Ngh… Fuck me…” I grumbled, rubbing my eyes with my wrists. Percy handed me my glasses, so I put them on and blinked my eyes, then just let my head hang. I felt like absolute hell.
Mabel Turnsbrook was nearby. She’d wrapped up her hand in some bandages, standing way at the edge of the room just staring at the three of us teenagers. I looked at her, just to check on her… she didn’t look too shaken anymore. She had this thousand-yard stare going on, the look of a woman who was doing a lot of thinking. Eventually she blinked. Something got her attention, snapped her out of the daze, and she looked right at me, puzzled. She met my gaze for a moment, then pulled it away and did her best not to look me in the eye at all. She approached, sheepishly and all, padding over carefully so as not to step on any glass.
“Thank you,” She said breathlessly, “Thank you.”
I nodded at her, not really knowing what to say.
“That… thing…” She said, “Was that… really Anthony?”
“It was Anthony’s ghost,” I said, not wanting to explain the difference between spirits and shades to someone who wouldn’t even understand if I tried, “And yes, it was real.”
“I believe you,” She said, “That… that anger. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”
“I… wondered,” She said, “All this time. I questioned if there was more I could have done for him. He’s an ex-boyfriend of mine, you see, when I was your age. We broke up. He was just so… unstable; so angry. He hurt me, I couldn’t stay with him.”
I didn’t want to say anything to interrupt this woman as she poured her heart out to me. I could tell by her voice that it was hard. I couldn’t know if this Anthony thing was a big deal to her or not, but it did seem… important, at the very least. She was quiet for a while, so I took it as an invitation to say something. “Well, he’s resting now.”
Mabel took a deep breath. “Oh, he needed that, some peace. He needed it and I couldn’t bring it to him. I thought maybe I could, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t help him.”
She started crying. Tired, I rose to my feet and I looked at her, and the only thing I could think to do was give her a hug. I hugged her, wrapping my arms around her body. She hugged me back, stroking my back like an old grandma, gentle and comforting.
“Bless your heart,” She said, “Bless you for saving him.”
I pulled away and smiled at her. “All in a day’s work, ma’am.”
“But how?” She asked, “How… did you know? I… I don’t understand exactly quite what happened, and I don’t even know your name.”
“Cookie,” I said, “And it was just… magic.” I waved my fingers in a mystical gesture.
“My goodness,” She said, “Magic, you say? Well I believe it! Cookie… never you mind about the door or the damages, I’ll have someone come fix them up. I owe you my life. I can’t possibly repay you.”
“It’s alright,” I held up a hand, “No payment needed.”
“Such a sweet girl,” She crooned, “Well, Cookie, you’re an angel if ever there was one. Don’t you grow old and alone like me. You and your boyfriend had best stick together!”
I paused, looking back at Percy who shrugged at me. I laughed a little. “Lady, honestly?” I said, “That guy would be lucky to have me. Never gonna happen. Relationships are overrated.”
Chapter 9
And that was how I saved the day again.
Simon recovered from the incident, and I even made it back to school in time for lunch where I spent the rest of my day trying to pretend that I hadn’t done a damn thing out of the ordinary, but that was tough. My body still shook from opening the portal to the Nevernever, and it always took so much out of me to do it. Plus, the feelings. The first time, I never noticed all the feelings that would flow through me when I did it. They were insane. Like opening the Third Eye, everything just comes rushing in all at once and it’s either the greatest joy or the most maddening sorrow. Maybe that’s why I always passed out; some kind of mental backlash.
My mom never knew I skipped the first two classes that day, and I served out the rest of my grounding by reading books and finishing my homework – a welcome vacation. When I wasn’t doing that, I was brushing up on magic. A little meditation never hurt anybody, and I started trying to devise innovative ways to use things like ghost dust when I was facing off against Nevernevers. One idea I had was making the ghost dust into a sort of paste that I could harden into a shell and make little paintballs out of them. It’d be a long time before I got some ghost dust again, but I kept the plans jotted down and did my research toward that end. I started studying up on other creatures too. Preparation is a spellcaster’s best weapon, after all.
There were even things that could protect people from ghosts; charms and talismans I could create with my own two hands and some epic magic… and things from Jude’s shop. I became a little sponge of knowledge, and the second I was freed from my bedroom prison, I started going to Percy’s place more often. I always had an excuse to go visit without making myself look desperate for company. He came over to my place a few times too, but uh… well, he and I don’t really have much in common. I got him playing some SNES games with me on my laptop though, that was fun… but, ultimately, he’s a jock and I’m a nerd.
Still, it’s good to have friends where you could get them. Percy wasn’t the worst I could do.
So many days went by, and it seemed like the whole stalker thing blew over. So much had happened over such a short span of time – fires, assaults on my person, things like that – that eventually… people just didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I went right back to being invisible not because I was weird and people wanted to avoid me… but because weird things happened around me and nobody wanted to deal with that. Again, that suited me just fine! It was nice to have things go back to normal!
Just almost a week later, I stretched out my arms and legs as I sat down at a cafeteria table, Percy quickly dropping into a seat beside me. I opened my bag and dug around inside to set my plastic-wrapped cheese sandwich and juice box on the table, and started with the traditional first course of a pack of gushers. I opened the wrapping and dropped the congealed mess of melted-together fruit snacks onto the table, chuckling at the predicament before just picking them all up and shoving them all in my face at once. The juices inside squirted out all over the inside of my mouth as I chewed them up.
“Very attractive,” Percy said, “Oh, I think I’m in love.”
“Blow it out your ass.” I said, mouth full.
“And to think,” He said, peeling a banana and taking a bite out of it, “You’re the greatest hero this school has ever known.”
“Um, excuse me? Hero?”
Percy and I both just flattened our eyebrows and turned our heads to see Evangeline. There she was all prim and proper and perfume-pampered all powdered up and puffed up everywhere but her head, her long pink hair flowing down her scrawny body as she looked down her nose at us. Her little white crop-top, Lulu Lemon capris and runner shoes combo might have looked cute if she weren’t such a writhing cunt. She clicked her tongue and stood from one foot to the other, jutting her not-really-there hip out to the other side as if she were posing for some camera shoot that I prayed never actually happened to her.
“No.” She said curtly, “The day Cookie is a hero is the day a pig flies. Out of my butt.”
“Gee,” I said, “I’d be amazed if one could fit.”
She ignored me, shouldering her designer handbag. “How’s it going, Creepazoid? Found any new boys to creep on?”
“Eva, seriously,” Percy cut in, chewing on his ‘nanner. “What the heck’re you doing?”
Evangeline put on this offended expression, resting a hand daintily against her washboard of a chest. “Perseus, please, I’m just worried about Cookie!” She lied, “It just seems so unfair that I would get a new boyfriend, and she would remain alone and single as she has since the day I met her. I just want to see if she’s holding up alright.”
I had turned my attention entirely back to my lunch, stabbing the straw into my juice box. “Oh, is this my line?” I asked, “GEE, EVANGELINE DICKSON, GREATEST GIRL IN ALL OF SCHOOL, WHO IS YOUR NEW BOYFRIEND?” I made sure to shout and annunciate as forced and awkwardly as I could. Percy giggled at me. Evangeline didn’t look at all very impressed.
She shook it off and turned to greet her new boy toy. “Why here he comes now!”
It was Simon.
That walking piece of panda garbage with the admittedly still very nice ass stepped up holding a lunch tray with a bunch of food on it… no doubt for him and Evangeline, and no doubt paid for entirely by him. Ah, his cute little chest still looked great in his too-tight t-shirt and his little dick was making a bulge in his jeans. Hate him or no, I still checked him out. I let him watch me do it, too, I didn’t give a fuck. He shuffled a little uncomfortably under my gaze.
“Oh no,” I hammed, “It is Simon, my OLD crush who I would no longer touch with a pole ten feet in length!”
Percy banged on the table, head buried against his arm, masking his laughter.
“Ugh,” Evangeline said, “There’s no need to be so bitter you lonely old hag.”
I was about to say something about how that didn’t make any sense considering I wasn’t old, but Simon cut in. “Eva, come on, stop.” He said.
Evangeline looked shocked, and I swear the way she snapped her head to look at him she was about to spit flames. “Excuse me?” She said.
Simon looked at me, then at Evangeline. “She’s got it bad enough, we don’t need to make it worse.”
Evangeline thought that over, then smiled at me, a devilish grin. “That’s right, of course.” She said, “At this point it’s just kicking someone while they’re down! Well, have a nice lunch then, Cookie. Perseus, get better friends.”
She turned and strut away like she was worth a million bucks. Simon stayed behind, just looking at me for a while.
“Can I help you with something or what?” I asked, scathing as could be.
He lowered his head and mumbled, “Sorry.” Then he turned and took off after Evangeline.
I opened my sandwich and proceeded to eat it. Percy sat up and turned as he followed them with his eyes until they sat down. He then leaned in close to me, giddy as could be. “Come on, did he just apologize to you?” He asked, “D’you think that was a real apology?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I shrugged, “He can sit there knowing I hate him for a while, see how he likes it.”
Percy sat back and sucked in some air through his teeth. “Woof, that’s cold,” He said, “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
“You know what? Whatever,” I said, “I am just done. I’m better off alone! I’m a great person who saves lives and fights ghosts and goblins and keeps every one of these mouth-breathers on this God-forsaken planet. They don’t deserve me. My boobs are bigger than hers and my dick’s bigger than his. I think in the grand scheme of things I’m better than the both of them.”
Percy made a jerk-off gesture with his hand, laughing at me. I kicked my foot at him under the table to which he jerked away from and laughed some more. “Whatever, shut up, you dingus.” I laughed. I relaxed then and sighed, shaking my head. “You know what though? I’m definitely not gonna pine after nobody anymore. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”
“Wouldn’t technically that have happened with the ghost anyway because you’re all magic and crap?” Percy asked.
He had a point. “Well, yeah, sure, whatever. Listen, not the point.”
Percy looked past me for a second, then scooted closer to me and leaned in real close to wrap his arm around my shoulders and pull me in. “So, you mean to tell me,” He said, “That you’re never gonna check anyone out ever again?”
He used his hands to turn my head before I could answer so that I was watching as someone walked by. I knew that girl. Beautiful white hair, deep amethyst eyes, small tits, but muscular. Ass? Absolutely gigantic. Leila Stevens, the blue skunk, one of the more popular girls in the school. I remember seeing her on the first day of school and just staring at her for the longest time. I watched her pass by, watching the way her strong thighs rolled her fat ghetto ass in her khaki shorts left and right. Left and right, left and right…
Mmmm… Leila Stevens…
I could have stared at that girl all day long.
But she stopped and looked right at me, giving me that one-eyebrow raise of confusion. I just tried to make myself really small, while Percy had a good laugh at my expense. I grabbed him by his shirt and shook him around.
“Ugh, I’m gonna turn you into a newt!”
“Aaaaa oh noooo!” He mock screamed.
I put my head down on the table after releasing him and let out a loud “UUUUGH” into my arms. I couldn’t even say things had gone back to normal then. I was doomed for nothing to ever be normal again.
Fin.